World Music

Pirates of Caribbean: Swashbuckling Sea Songs

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Swashbuckling Sea Songs collects 14 seafaring singalongs that aim their cannons at the children who have spent time on the legendary theme park ride. The goofy renditions of classic sea shanties like “Blow the Man Down” and “Yo, Ho, Ho (And a Bottle of Rum)” have more in common with the Popeye cartoons than they do Naval work songs, and obvious film nods like “Welcome to the Caribbean” and “Davy Jones’ Locker” sound hastily crafted for action figure commercials. The children will like it.

Blow the Man Down: A Collection Of Sea Songs & Shanties

Contains songs from FAREWELL NANCY, a 1964 compilation of sea chanties, and additional tracks. Based on a 1964 compilation LP called Farewell Nancy, this CD adds several more tracks. It features some of the British folk revival’s top performers singing sea songs, shanties and ballads. Singers include Louis Killen, Cyril Tawney and Ian Campbell.

Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea

Dan Milner sings all 13 tracks on this collection of songs associated with the Irish seafaring life with instrumental and vocal support from a rotating cast of nine other musicians, Mick Moloney being the most notable of those. Milner was born in England but has spent most of his life in North America. He is of Irish descent, and he has done several albums of Irish music since the late ’90s. According to Milner’s liner notes, this is “an album of maritime songs from Ireland and its diaspora in which most of the central characters stand uneasy next to the law.”

The arrangements are low-key as well, though admirably varied, incorporating mandolin, concertina, piano, guitar, whistle, banjo, accordion, flute, bouzouki, and fiddle. Milner’s notes also offer detailed accounts of the sources of the songs, as well as the real-life characters whose experiences helped shape them.

Classic Maritime Music from Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways has a long and distinguished reputation as champions of the maritime tradition, and the reissue of the 32 tracks on their Classic Maritime Music compilation is a wonder.
None of the records that these songs originally appeared on is in print, and the compilers have done a commendable job at choosing representative tracks from the large array of artists whose work has graced many a turntable over the course of the last 60 years. Opening the set are two cuts from New York’s South Street Seaport Museum troubadours, the X-Seamen’s Institute, a collective whose repertoire was as impressive in size as in execution, and whose several records for Folkways have been long sought after by collectors. Their version of “Shenandoah” is among the most beautiful ever recorded. Also notable is the inclusion of three tracks from the Foc’sle Singers, a seafaring supergroup of sorts that included Paul Clayton and Dave Van Ronk, who released one of the genre’s finest recordings, Foc’sle Songs and Shanties, in 1959. Contributions from the Bahamas-based Dicey Doh Singers (“Sloop John B.”) and instrumentals from Ellen Cohen (“Ten-Penny Bit”) and Tom Sullivan (“Homeward Bound/The Old Slipper Shoe”) help to dispel the notion that all sea shanties were merely work songs with a call and response. Excellent tracks by everyone from “salty dogs” like Ewan MacColl to Leadbelly, whose version of the Atlantic sailing shanty “Haul Away Joe” sees the bluesman adapting it to a Mississippi riverboat song, are wonderful windows into a world that’s sadly diminishing. Classic Maritime Music is indispensable. ~ James Christopher Monger

The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan

Lost Songs Of The Silk Road

Sounds Of The Silk Road: Musical Instruments Of Asia

From the cymbals and gongs used by Chinese priests use to invoke deities to the oboes and drums of Turkish weddings, music and its related instruments are an integral part of life throughout Asia. Sounds of the Silk Road surveys the instruments of Asia and the traditions that have engendered them, offering the reader ways to approach these often unfamiliar objects and the music they produce. This beautiful book is the first to deal with this topic in such depth and breadth, and is the first to feature of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s world-renowned collection of Asian instruments. Each chapter focuses on a specific country’s musical traditions and instruments. Some 50 instruments are highlighted, ranging from silk-stringed zithers to shell trumpets and from double-headed drums made from human skulls to the complex Javanese gamelan. Intended for the general reader, this visually stunning volume introduces the uses, sounds, history, playing technique, decoration, and symbolism of Asia’s skillfully crafted and fascinatingly diverse musical instruments.

Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon

Performer: Yo-Yo Ma, Silk Road Ensemble, Jason Duckles

Conductor: Alan Pierson

Composer: Fikret Amirov, Sandeep Das, Indrajit Das Sandeep / Dey, Uzeir Hajibeyov, Kayhan Kalhor

It is a perilous proposition when genres clash–and no such collaboration is more potentially fraught than when improvisation-trained folk musicians sit in with Western classical instrumentalists, who are taught to interpret a printed score. The renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has devoted much of his professional life to such intercultural experiments. But the traditions of nations situated along the ancient Silk Road, which began in the Far East, meandered through Asia and terminated in Europe, are especially dear to him. These lushly arranged pieces range from moody scenic vistas to percussive Turkish hip-shakers and they make very pleasant listening. If they owe more to the European canon than the ethnic sources that inspired them, they are also the result of respectful give-and-take between a team of acknowledged masters. And nobody is more of a team player than Maestro Ma, an impassioned, fearless musical seeker and a gracious, deferential colleague. —Christina Roden