EKT Gdynia

Szanty is the Polish maritime folk song scene centered on sea shanties—traditional sailors’ work songs—reinterpreted and newly composed in Polish. While rooted in Anglo‑American and Celtic shanty repertoire, the Polish movement developed a distinct festival and club culture: multi‑part vocal arrangements, sing‑along choruses, and acoustic instrumentation (guitars, concertina/accordion, fiddle, whistles, bodhrán) designed for pubs, student sailing clubs, and concert stages. Repertoires mix faithful translations of historical work songs (halyard, capstan, and forebitter types) with original Polish ballads about life at sea, camaraderie, storms, ports, and ships. The style values call‑and‑response, strong pulse for group singing, and storytelling lyrics, often blending elements of Polish sung‑poetry and broader European folk aesthetics.

Sea shanty is a maritime work song that developed aboard sailing ships to coordinate group labor. It uses a strong, steady pulse and a call-and-response structure in which a lead singer (the shantyman) calls the verse and the crew responds in chorus to time their pulls, pushes, or turns together. Historically unaccompanied and sung in unison, shanties are tailored to specific tasks: short-drag (brief, forceful pulls), halyard/long-drag (heavier, fewer pulls per line), capstan/windlass (continuous, walking rhythm), and pumping shanties (repetitive, machine-like pulse). Lyrics mix practical timing cues with humor, bravado, longing, and port lore, and often use nonsense vocables (“way, hey,” “haul away”) to accent the work strokes. While closely related to broader “sea songs” and forebitters (off-duty songs), shanties are distinct in purpose: they are functional music designed to synchronize labor. The style flourished in the 19th century among English-speaking merchant navies, absorbing influences from British and Irish folk traditions and African-American and Afro-Caribbean work-song practices.