The musical genre Shantypunk is quite what you’d expect: It is a blend of traditional sea shanties or modern sea songs with punk rock music. The lyrics need at least a loose connection to the sea, and powerful singing is important. Shantypunk comes from a tradition of sailors singing work songs with a strong rhythm to accompany the hard work at sea.
Classical sea shanties were supposed to be sung a cappella. However, Shantypunk combines the mandatory call-and-response pattern and energetic sing-a-long tunes with:
- drums
- bass guitar
- banjo
- mandolin
- accordion
- guitar
- harmonica
Not all at the same time of course. And many other instruments are possible, too.
Who invented Shantypunk?
Whistling on Deck started using the genre name Shantypunk in early 2023. It grew a little more popular later that year when the folk punk band Skinny Lister (that we admire) named an album “Shanty Punk”. This was pure coincidence!
For Whistling on Deck combining punk rock with nautical tunes and themes just feels natural: As a band from Hamburg, Germany’s most important harbour city, some of us grew up with traditional shanty choirs performing at local festivals. So trying to imitate Irish folk was not an option: We wanted to build something on our own connected to the area we live in. And so we did.
Whistling on Deck’s idea of Shantypunk
Our approach to Shantypunk means singing loud and playing rather passionately than virtuosically. This is where folk music traditions and punk rock attitude meet, isn’t it? We pay homage to generations of sailors who, at best, had a cheap instrument out of tune to support their songs on their journey. The musical material is supposed to be alive, meaning that there is not one ‘correct’ version of a song but a broad range of variants, evolving over time and space.
Inspiration for Whistling on Deck’s Shantypunk comes from a multitude of great artists: Stan Rogers, The Dubliners, The Pogues, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Levellers, The Real McKenzies, Flogging Molly, The Dreadnoughts, Dropkick Murphys, Storm Weather Shanty Choir, The Rumjacks, The Stanfields and many more. We dig where we stand, too, and honour the work of German musicians like Hannes Wader, Rio Reiser, Thees Uhlmann or Achim Reichel.