Posted on 03/01/2013 at 04:43 PM
| Filed Under Blogs
Shanties are much, much, much later than Vikings. Shanties are work songs, I'll be doing a separate entry for them later. I love them, especially when you have a really good shantyman who knows what he (and more rarely, she) is doing. The problem is that you get a lot of people who haven't got a clue about what the song was for and they sing way too frigging fast. My take on the stuff sung in bars is that people sing it because they like to sing. Nothing fake about that. Some is very good, some, well, let's just say at least the people singing are having fun and leave it at that.
I checked out your links. Based on what I heard, I'd recommend Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and Clannad. Check out Clannad's soundtrack to the Robin of Sherwood BBC TV series. There's a top 100 list on YouTube for them here. The other thing I recommend is getting a Last FM account and just plug in the artist's name that you like and see what happens. I've found a lot of music that way.