Thinking about the Sea Shanty in 2021

I admit that I was amused when Stephen Colbert declared 2021 the year of the Sea Shanty the other night on A Late Show, but part of me cringed when I heard him encouraging Jon Batiste to join in the shanty craze.

The Sea Shanty was, after all, sung on merchant ships as they transported cargo back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean during the decades that preceded the American Civil War. And some of the "cargo" these ships carried below decks to America was human cargo, to be delivered to slave owners in America. And the cargo carried on the return trip across the Atlantic would have been the spoils of slave labor like tobacco and cotton.

Before you start thinking about spending your afternoon (or all of 2021) listening to sea shanties, have a glance at their origin story.