Shanty U.K.

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SHANTY-UK 2012 SEA SHANTY FESTIVAL
(13-10-11 Song Writers Pages Started) See Side Bar
(27-7-11 Sea Shanty Session at the Baltic Fleet, Liverpool) (Link)
(12-05-11 Photos of Our Festival Posted) (Here)
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Shanty UK Gathering, Goole, East Yorkshire
(Review by Jim Saville)

A cold bleak January day is a strange time of year to hold a shanty festival but that is effectively what happened on 21st january this year.
The steering committee of Shanty UK, the organisers of the biggest UK Shanty Festival decided that it was unfair to hold all their meetings in one spot and organised regional events, the first of which was a committee meeting in the North Eastern Region and the The Yorkshire Waterways Museum at Goole was selected as a venue for their first meeting of 2012. As well as a meeting of the steering committee it was decided to hold a maritime sing-a-round and at 5:30 whilst committee members gathered around their tables a group of singers gathered round a minibar in the hold of the barge “Room 58” which is now decked out as a floating conference and exhibition area.
The group of about 20 people in the first instance comprised a couple of well know shanty groups and a number of club singers and they proceeded to rock the boat with a series of songs as good as any heard when the boat was a regular venue at the wonderful Hull Sea Fever Festival. In the next hour or so more and more singers both individuals and groups arrived to swell the numbers so that by the time the committee meeting was over and board members joined the throng the seats had run out and every flat surface was pressed into action as a make shift resting place.
For the next 4 hours the singing alternated between groups and a series of individuals entertaining each other and the audience that had also turned up with one of the best performances of maritime songs that I have heard in a long time. There were ballads and humorous ditties, full blown shanties and sailing songs to suit every taste, mostly unaccompanied but with a smattering of squeeze boxes, bodhrans and the occasional guitar to add tone(!).
All in all there were 5 and a half hours of really great entertainment for everyone at a price of whatever you wanted to contribute to the museum’s collecting box. What is even more remarkable is that this was an almost impromptu get together of folk and a mere curtain raiser for the main festival which takes place in the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port on 6-7-8 April 2012. With openers like this the actual festival promises to be even better than last year and will be the premier UK maritime event of 2012 and that is for the knock down price of just £6 for the full 3 day event.
So book your place at Ellesmere Port at Easter and keep your eyes and ears peeled for a repeat of the Goole event in 2013 as well as other “regional” events from the ShantyUK team in the future.

SHANTY UK

Ellesmere Port Festival 6th 7th and 8th April 2012  
We are pleased to confirm that we will be running a Gathering again at Ellesmere Port National Waterways Museum next Easter.
This is already shaping up to be an exciting event.
More information here.

Web Site
We have used some of the money from our last festival to purchase Shanty UK our own web space .
Some of our members are performers so we have put up pages for them so you can see who they are. There is a full listing of all our members and other information about the organisation in our private members area.
We have started to build a song writers area. The aim is to share new material to get it to the widest possible audience. If you are writing songs about the sea or trades and lifestyles associated with it and want to have them included please get in touch with us.

The latest exciting development will be the addition in the next week or so of 'SHANTYPEDIA' an archive of Shanties and Maritime song. We hope to eventually have words, midi files, sheet music and clips of performance. The site should provide you with all the information you need to learn and perform a song. Rome wasn't built in a day so keep coming back as we will be adding new material all the time.

Membership
There is information about how to join Shanty UK on the site, or if you are interested in membership just drop us an email from the site and we will get back to you .

Our aim is to promote and preserve Maritime Music.

Please help raise the profile by linking to our site.

If you have information about performers or events that we do not have listed please let us know.