"Tomorrow morning I get to learn the songs of the fishermen!"
"You're going to sea tomorrow?"
"Yeah ... in the wooden boats."
"You're going to vomit!"
Here I am in the Ee-Zee internet cafe in Nungua Township, Ghana, and these are the kinds of reassuring conversations I have. This one was with the cafe's manager, and as we talked he pretended to barf all over the student typing away in the next carrel.
Even now, before I experience the rolling ocean swell, my stomach is engaged in some sort of extreme aerobics, and I am sweating profusely. Part of it is because Ghana is as hot and humid as they said it would be. But another part is this: I am nervous. Tomorrow morning at 2 a.m. I begin what is in my heart the core of my Watson experience in Ghana. I will go to sea with a team of 18 Ga fishermen in a wooden dugout craft, pushed by a small outboard.
Until now it has been two weeks of arranging and planning, meeting and bargaining. That was by design. I knew it would take about this long to set myself up with the right people in the right spot to ensure a good experience. I spent a week in the dusty, loud city of Accra meeting with professors and musicians and planning out my next two months. Then I spent this past week traveling in the region east of Lake Volta looking for a good farm on which to settle during the month of November.
Now I am back in this sprawling seaside township thinking about which food will feel better on the way back up. Grilled plantains or red beans and spicy rice? Luckily I have some experience in this area. Back when I was crew on the Schooner J&E Riggin, Captain John told me long a story whose moral was this: Never eat chicken pot pie with peas before an ocean passage. They get stuck in your nostrils.
So it looks like grilled plantains and an early bed for me, which is just fine. I might take the evening to reflect on the last three months, the first quarter of my Watson year. If you're hunting for broad themes the clearest is this: songs of the sea.
In Holland I got an in-depth look at how thousands of mild-mannered, middle-aged lowlanders are re-creating the songs and traditions of the sailors on the world's great tall ships. I wanted to see why sea-shanty choirs there have become successful. As a member of the Boekaniers I sang in a handful of weekend-long festivals devoted only to sea-shanties. I visited Sail Amsterdam, the world's largest manifestation of tall ships, to see how shanties are incorporated into that event (just barely). On a 40 meter flat-bottomed Scootje I sailed with Captain Boogie in a Force 7 gale, which blew so hard it snapped our foresail boom. Most members of the German shanty choir I was with huddled below and scurried up only to hork over the leeward rail.
And though I got to travel across northern Europe with this group, what I was most impressed with was not the places, though they were old and beautiful, but a picture of an innovative way of life.
I use the word innovative because we live in a world filled with people who spend each week rushing about without uttering one musical note. Masses of humanity spend their time without the power of shanties and other songs to help them along.
The Boekaniers are different. They make a concerted effort to be musical on a weekly basis. In fact, I witnessed a determination so strong that weekends became one string of musical events, interpreting old shanties in new ways, constantly making music with each other and for each other.
In one moment the Boekaniers could transform a street corner, a bustling tavern, or a kindergarten classroom into a vibrant space, bursting with life and energy. You can see the power of the music as passersby, drained from lives of rushing about, are filled with something they never knew they missed. Their faces gain color, they stand straighter, their cheeks find lines of smiles not seen for weeks, maybe years.
I witnessed this in Denmark, at the Esbjerg music festival. An older woman came up to me after we performed, and said in a quiet, confessional tone: "I really like what you guys do ..." She paused and turned away from the milling crowd. "These Germans are nice people, but they sing without heart. They are so rigid ... You guys are loose and sing with all of your heart. It makes me feel young again."
One of the strongest memories I have of Harderwijk is taking a stroll one evening along the back roads of the residential district. The large picture windows which feature prominently in every house near the street are impossible to keep your eyes off of, and what they revealed was shocking. In fully nine out of 10 windows was a flickering blue light, and slumped shadows on couches and in chairs, mouths slack-jawed, eyes dull. It was dinnertime and some of the figures vacantly stuffed morsels of food into their mouths.
This time of day, dinner time, was once the territory of vivid stories told by candlelight, of songs recanted, of tunes passed from grandparents to children over steaming plates of food cooked with family recipes. Even in Holland, this scene was common only a few generations ago. Now I fear that most nights, people in Holland (and America, and everywhere else with electricity and televisions) spend their time letting their potential as great storytellers and as powerful musicians slip away.
But on Tuesdays and on weekends at least, the Boekaniers are different. They shout and play for hours at a time, and leave tired but refreshed. In so doing they are preserving an old tradition of work songs and creating their own tradition of singing together in a socially fractured world.
I believe it is this life that has caused shanty and sea songs to become so popular in northern Europe in the past 15 years. This tradition gives life that cannot be found in plastic gadgets, in efficiency widgets. These songs resonate with us. They move.
As a musician and a sailor I have to say that my only criticism is that these "work songs" are no longer used for actual physical work. Perhaps the closest these Dutchmen get is humming a tune at their computers, all the while wishing they were out sailing. Even in the Baltic, when we actually were out sailing, the only time we sang a shanty to lift the sails was on the last day, in the driving wind and cold, when we absolutely had to get ourselves going in order to finish our trip.
It was there it crystallized for me. Work really is easier when sung, and I believe that music might just be best when worked to.
In between lurches overboard tomorrow morning I get to test this hypothesis. For now I am off to sample the grilled plantains and an early sleep. Wish me a safe sail and a net full of fish!
— Bennett