{"id":5308,"date":"2015-11-16T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/sea-chanteys-add-high-note-to-whalefest\/"},"modified":"2015-11-16T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T17:03:00","slug":"sea-chanteys-add-high-note-to-whalefest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/sea-chanteys-add-high-note-to-whalefest\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea chanteys add high note to WhaleFest"},"content":{"rendered":"

SITKA \u2014<\/strong> \u201cYou\u2019re in good voice today!\u201d<\/p>\n

It may be one of the best compliments that chanteyman Don Sineti can give out after he invites audiences to join him for choruses of \u201cBarett\u2019s Privateers\u201d or \u201cRolling Down to Old Maui\u201d or even a couple of verses of \u201cThis Land is Your Land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sineti performed a family concert at one of the final events in Sitka\u2019s annual WhaleFest. The concert was a combination of traditional songs, sea chanteys, songs of the sea as well as folk songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSongs that people can join in on, and that kids will like,\u201d Sineti said.<\/p>\n

At his concerts, Sineti also provides some background about seafaring traditions and answers questions.<\/p>\n

Sineti has been performing and giving talks at the elementary schools, preschools, the Pioneers Home, Swan Lake Senior Center and the Sitka Rotary Club meeting. He also led the squid dissection lesson with students at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary.<\/p>\n

Sineti first came to Sitka in 1998 for the second year of WhaleFest, and has returned every year but one since then.<\/p>\n

His home base is Mystic Seaport, the Museum of the America and the Sea, in Connecticut, where he works in the Department of Interpretation specializing in sea chanteys. He also performs at schools, pubs, retirement centers, \u201ckind of a wide number of venues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Music has been a part of Sineti\u2019s life since he was young. He played clarinet in the high school band, but got involved in the folk music scene when it was becoming popular.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen (folk music) came out, I just loved it,\u201d he said. Some of the folk songs popularized, and \u201cmodernized,\u201d by the Kingston Trio and groups like it were songs of the sea and chanteys.<\/p>\n

As he was becoming more interested in folk music, he met Stan Hugill, the last living chanteyman who worked on a major ocean sailing vessel at the end of the age of sailing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met him at a yearly sea music festival, which he came to every year until he passed,\u201d Sineti said.<\/p>\n

Sineti said he was performing folk songs at the festival in Mystic 24 years ago when he drew Hugill\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

Hugill said he didn\u2019t know what Sineti was doing for a living, but said, \u201cwhatever you\u2019re doing you\u2019ve got to stop doing it, and work here full time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt I had the perfect voice for singing sea chanteys. Clarity and volume is more important than tonal beauty,\u201d Sineti said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake that as a compliment,\u201d said Dave Moore, who was accompanying Sineti on his school visits. Moore, a former commanding officer of Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, can attest to the value of the chanteyman from his experience as a cadet at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy at New London, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Sineti said there\u2019s a difference between chanteys \u2014 which are always sung a cappella \u2014 and traditional songs of the sea. Part of the training at the academy includes working as crew aboard the academy\u2019s tall ship, the sailing barque Eagle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a fresh Iowa farm boy on the sea, we did a number of courses on the Eagle,\u201d Moore said. \u201cOn the second or third cruise we had a chanteyman. The first time we set sail he started making noise, and we were thinking, \u2018Stop that music! We\u2019re trying to work.\u2019 But at the end of the cruise, if the chantyman wasn\u2019t there we weren\u2019t hauling on the lines – the chanteyman was that important. We loved the chanteyman.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the purpose of the chanteyman, said Sineti, who loves telling audiences that on a sailing ship one chanteyman is said to be worth 10 other men.<\/p>\n

Sineti explained that the difference between chanteys and songs of the sea is that chanteys are strictly working songs, which you don\u2019t sing unless you\u2019re working, with specific songs paced to each particular activity, such as raising the anchor or hoisting sails. They\u2019re always sung without any instrumental accompaniment.<\/p>\n

Songs of the sea are ballads, and they cover a wide range of subjects, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBattles, the relationships with people in the harbor … it was a wide brush they painted with,\u201d Sineti said. \u201cPopular songs of the era \u2014 minstrel songs \u2014 songs from other lands, from the people on board the vessels: Afro-Cuban, Afro-American, Native American, Hawaiian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sineti knows hundreds of tunes, and varies his Sitka show every year. One thing that doesn\u2019t change is the multitude of opportunities for the audience to join in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SITKA \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re in good voice today!\u201d It may be one of the best compliments that chanteyman Don Sineti can give out after he invites audiences to join him for choruses of \u201cBarett\u2019s Privateers\u201d or \u201cRolling Down to Old Maui\u201d or even a couple of verses of \u201cThis Land is Your Land.\u201d Sineti performed a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":5309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}