SEAWEED IN THE FRUIT LOCKER

Rhys Morgan

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Introduction

Nina Davies

You're listening to Future Artefacts FM , a bi-monthly podcast/broadcast featuring speculative fiction audio works by artists and writers produced and presented by Nina Davies,

Rebecca Edwards

Niamh Schmidtke

and Niamh Schmidtke, on RTM

and also available on podcast channels.

The programme focuses on fictional works intended for broadcast to carve out a better understanding of the now by exploring various interpretations of the future.

Together with guests we discuss the mechanics of different types of storytelling to reveal the complexities of contemporary culture. Let’s get started.

All

Let’s get started.

Artist Introduction

Welcome back to future artifacts FM, Episode 32. As per usual, I'm your host, Nina Davies, and I'm here with

I'm Rebecca Edwards,

and I'm Niamh Schmidt, and we're here today with the wonderful guest, Rhys Morgan. How are you, Rhys?

Rhys Morgan

Hi, yeah, I'm good. Thank you.

So just to introduce Rhys, Rhys Morgan is a queer interdisciplinary artist and curator based in Plymouth in the UK. His work explores queerness as an operative in everyday experience, and the expectations, possibilities and limitations of how this is expressed. Being based in the southwest of England, Morgan's work often reflects on the heritage and experience of queer people on the peninsula. In 2023 he completed the MFA fine art at Goldsmiths in London, being selected for Bloomberg New contemporaries the same year. And he recently worked for the National Gallery with conceptual artist Jeremy Deller as one of four national assistant curators to deliver Deller's 2025 work, The Triumph of Art.

And we're speaking with Rhys as part of our current mini series as a chorus. And we're really excited to speak about this specific work called Seaweed in the Fruit Locker, but to introduce you back, if you haven't listened to the other episodes in the mini series, this as a chorus points to the group of people who may sing songs together, and the impact the repetition of a chorus in a song has on its listeners singing together has long been used as a tool for synchronization workplaces, from sea shanties that coordinated sailors movements, such as what we're listening to today, to field song that kept laborers in rhythm. These occupational songs don't just pass the time. They harness the physical power of music to move ships, shape tasks and unify collective effort.

We're particularly excited to have Rhys on the show. Because, I mean, everyone may know now, my obsession with choirs and the project that we're talking about today in particular, is looking at, kind of, how a choir can exist within an art practice, or be an art practice. What are the boundaries and the blurred boundaries of those things? Do they need to exist?

Rhys, this work Seaweed in the Fruit Locker that we're showing today is also, if I understand correctly, is the name of your choir or sea shanty group. How would you describe that?

That's right, most of the time they call them groups or crews, but yeah, we call ourselves a choir just to be belligerent.

This is like a group that you started as sort of an art project that's kind of ended up having a life of its own.

Yeah, it started as a commissioned work, and then has yet just kind of carried on and yeah, become its own, moving, fully automated beast. It's amazing.

What we'll be showing from this work today is three selected songs, and what we're going to do is we're going to, sort of, we're going to play one now and then we're going to kind of reveal each song as the conversation progresses. Before we listen to the first one, is there anything else that you want to say for listeners?

I suppose, actually, certainly with the first song, but also in general, I suppose, I think it's interesting to think about the place in terms of being based in Plymouth, and a lot of the songs being written by people who are living in Plymouth like they're not necessarily always written about that place. But it's just interesting to think about that kind of cut, that relationship of coastal and being a coastal city, and what that looks like.

Imagine the wind and the salt, basically, as you're listening to this, you know, and probably that feeling a little bit too cold, but still being embraced by it.

The first Shanty we're going to listen to is called Lion's Den. Do you want to, maybe briefly, just introduce what it's about?

So Lion's Den was the first song that was rewritten for the choir. I rewrote it quite early on, and it's rewritten from Rio Grande, which is a traditional shanty. And the inspiration for this is from a place in Plymouth, a kind of sea front men's bathing area that has been there for a very long time and is now kind of quite dilapidated in terms of its structure … it's just a long, notorious cruising site, and has had, has a, had a, kind of, quite an interesting history, and has been, you know, kind of parts of it have been kind of like clamped down in the past, there used to be kind of network of tunnels that kind of stemmed from it, that all got kind of concreted in in the late 90s. And so I wanted to immortalise it in a shanty that uses Polari, very, very filthy words in Polari to celebrate that space. And, you know, as a kind of, you know, a piece of queer heritage, and you know, one that's at risk of loss, you know,

Polari is something that we will get to as well, just to say that, but yeah, we hope you enjoy this first one, and we'll see you back here in about two minutes and 10 seconds.

Work: Lion's Den

Lion’s Den (Rio Grande) - Re-written by Rhys Morgan
Key: F

O’ say was you ever down Lion’s Den?
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
It’s there / that mauve chanters / call down all the men,
For we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

{Chorus}:

It’s away, boys, away (Away!)
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
Farewell and ahoy, my bona rack boys
And we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

It’s farewell to you all the girls of the town
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
You got / our half-parker / to keep you around
And we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

{Chorus}

She’s a deep water ship and a deep water crew
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
Where the black market queen’s/ have full / haarver too
And we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

{Chorus}:
It’s away, boys, away (Away!)
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
Farewell and ahoy, my bona rack boys
And we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

We was sick of the plate when maria was gone
A-weigh, to Lion’s!
Drive in his packet / to charver along
And we’re bound for the Lion’s Den!

{Chorus} [X2]

Conversation

Welcome back to our episode with Rhys Morgan on sea shanties of the project Seaweed in the Fruit Locker.

So Rhys, one thing we're looking at with this mini series is how collaborative practices function within contemporary arts infrastructure, and what conditions maybe allow for this gathering to take place. Collaboration is nothing new for artists, but it feels like it's being spoken about more openly in recent years, with collaborators, maybe becoming part of a works credit more specifically or through conception or production. So how do you see the collaborations within your work, and how do they perhaps operate as more of a community than art?

So really interesting question, because I think the process of bringing the choir together was kind of quite, you know, it's kind of, you know, put a call out. And, you know, it's quite broad. I wanted people from all backgrounds, all areas of the LGBTQ plus community. And that was just because I wanted to make sure as many voices had the opportunity to kind of be platformed in that as possible.

I think as queer people like, I think visibility is our kind of, like, greatest asset, really, at the moment. And I think, and then not that that's easy as a white, potentially CIS, presenting gay man to kind of, like, go, “You know what? We just need to be more visible”. But like, because it's not, I know it's not as simple as that, but I also know that…

You're not in, like, a major city, you know, you're not in London, or you're not in Manchester, or, I feel like often queer culture sort of revolves around kind of coming to some kind of center in order to find your community. So what if you're somewhere in Plymouth, you're if you're in Plymouth, for example, as well, that visibility feels much more important because the concentration is usually less.

Although you've said differently to this before. You said kind of, because it's a university town, Plymouth specifically, has a larger queer network because of, I don't know, the youth coming through the city, perhaps.

Yeah, totally. And it's, you know, it is a city, but it's a very small city, and it's a very, I don't like the word usually, but it's a very regional city, as it were, and just for the listeners I did scare quotes around that, around regional there, just, just because I don't want anybody calling me out on that.

But, you know, it is a regional city in the greater sense of it. And we don't have many queer spaces. I mean, not obviously, they're dwindling across the board anyway, but no less than a place like Plymouth, you know, we don't have… and also because, I guess, generationally, queerness has changed as well, because those queer communities have changed. So like, there are queer spaces here that maybe look a bit more like queer spaces did maybe 20/30, years ago, or whatever.

Bring it back to the song that we just listened to Lion’s Den. Is that I'm assuming that's, I mean, that's not a venue, per se. I guess it's a…

no, sure, but it's but again, but exactly that is a cruising site out of necessity, right? You know, that would have been at a time. I mean, there is a fabulous gay sauna here now, but it was in a time long before there was a gay sauna here, you know. So those sorts of congressional sites, for those sorts of practices weren't, you know, weren't in abundance, and so it was quite an appealing prospect for quite a broad range of people in terms of bringing together the choir.

I just wanted to ask about the members in the choir. And if that's a fluid thing, are there members that have been there since the very start? How long has it been going, actually?

Our first rehearsal was, I think, in July of 2022, and then we had our first performance in November. So since then, I think there's probably about, there's probably about eight members now that have been there since pretty much the start.

It's kind of great that it's a sort of community that started from an art project and then has, like, lived on as a sort of community in its own right. How often does that happen and with participatory art,

yeah, and the longevity of it as well, right?

Yeah.

I think other examples of, like, participatory art that has kind of continued on, like past, the past, its initial sort of delivery is quite rare, and more often than not, it's normally where participatory art has kind of met groups that are pre existing and have kind of co-opted. Co-opted is a problematic word, but you know what I mean? They've kind of brought them in to work with them.

I'm thinking of an example, like the fairy brass band from Manchester, who, who Jeremy Deller worked with to do acid brass, you know, they carried on performing that years after, and still do to this day. But they were a pre existing group. So it's not, you know, he's worked with them, but I think in terms of the kind of the community being set up, I think it's quite rare, apart from, maybe where it's like a more deliberate art practice, like a ray collective, or something like that, where, you know, that's the kind of intention, but I mean, in our group, it's people from all backgrounds and and I try not to kind of give them too much of the kind of conceptual contemporary art kind of framework. I try not to kind of enforce that on them too much. That's kind of my side of it, if you know what I mean, their side is just to kind of be involved with it and kind of be..

Just enjoy it and like, yeah.

just absorbed in it, and just kind of and just kind of enjoy it from that point of view, and not kind of architecturalise a kind of concept around it.

Rhys, I wanted to open up a question about authorship within your work and your practice as a whole. How did you decide on authorship of the newly written shanties, and where does the IP live here? Is there a voting system within the choir? Or how do you see the relationship between the choir and your art practice in these shanties?

I think, in terms of where, the IP, you know, it kind of exists on multiple levels, doesn't it? In terms of, I think there's the IP of those who've written songs and what those stories are that they're telling, and often they're their own stories, or they're a kind of an imagined version of their stories, or informed by their history or lived experience.

And then there's also the IP of the group together singing, if that makes sense, kind of like, I think, you know, we're kind of as one body. We're kind of like, we kind of share that ownership of that space together at that moment.

IP is sort of like an interesting concept when we're talking about, sort of like folk music, which, like its very existence, is that you want it to kind of spread.

Yeah, totally. I've never set, like, a manifesto or a set of rules for anybody to follow, but I think we all kind of come into it with a kind of mutual understanding that, like, you know, we want these songs to get out there. And we do. We're quite happy, you know. We do get requests from choirs to sing our songs. We also, occasionally, it does happen. We find out that another choir has been singing our songs, and we don't sometimes we don't even know how it's, how it's ended up, you know, in their hands as a song, which is really, it's really fascinating. It happened once or twice.

There's obvious ways, obviously, in the songs out there. We have, like, booklets and stuff that are gigs that people can sing along and stuff like that.

But oh, so you share the lyrics.

Yeah. We share the lyrics. Yeah. We try, yeah. We try to. And when I've got the budget to kind of to get them printed, yeah, I always try and make, like a printed songbook for people to join in.

I love the idea of maybe somebody coming along to one of your performances, taking the book home, sharing it with somebody who they think might be interested, and then that then goes on to be in another choir, and with intellectual property, I think the IP that's really interesting within songs is the voices.

So you said before that the choir is in flux, and it's maybe 10, 15, members, but it has been many more. And I think maybe the IP changes with each coming together of different people, because they bring different sonic qualities or textures in their voice, right?

So your version of Hellcats, for example, might be different to, I mean, will inherently be different to another choir who's got those lyrics.

That's really, yeah, that's really interesting. And also, because this kind of structure of shanties is really interesting in terms of how it relates to this conversation, in some ways, because the tradition of shanties on in terms of on boats, how they operated, is you'd have a shanty man who would kind of be the lead caller, and they would often be subject to kind of extra rations, or extra pay for leading the shanties to kind of keep the ship running to time.

But I think what's interesting about that is that then they would obviously rewrite… as they were singing the songs, they would rewrite it to reflect what happened in their most recent port, or their most recent battle, or, well, you know, whatever. And in a very similar way, you know, when these when the crew write these songs. When the choir write these songs, they, you know, we're often not singing themselves. And so they're embodying that story themselves, which is really amazing to watch and to be part of.

But then, yeah, somebody else's take, you know, somebody else then is taking that on somewhere else. And, you know, and it's happened literally all over, all over the world. I've had people kind of, we've had people kind of reach out from America and, you know, Saudi Arabia, or even, somebody reached out to me.

There's something that I guess I'm kind of thinking about in that question about IP also, which you kind of dovetailed into at the end, where, when it's when it is these queer histories, these queer stories. Like one of the songs we're going to listen to at the end of the episode is speaking about being asexual, which is a topic that is still kind of seen as relatively and not really taboo, but just like not spoken about at all.

There's a sense within these queer sea shanties that we're getting to understand histories and ways of being in the world that aren't well represented, but in this way, are represented in, like, quite generally, like a cheerful manner. And it's making me think about other ways, kind of moving into the next question about the accessibility of those lyrics. You know, there isn't a sense of like this is, you know, conceptual art that you need to walk into a gallery in order to appreciate and understand. You even sent us on some recordings of the performances. You know, they're not within white walls. They're in the square, like the centers of towns and cities.

And part of me is in that is making me think about, like, what are the contemporary versions of this? You know, you're taking, you know, folk songs, or kind of songs from the 1800s and back, reimagining the lyrics. But you know, what would you see kind of contemporary versions potentially as being football chants or Tiktok or like the clips of songs and tiktoks as this kind of, also iterative thing. I'm wondering why that type of singing as a sea shanty feels important now.

So I guess, on the one hand, what would a contemporary sea shanty be to you? Or is it just what the choir is doing? Kind of why does it feel important to make that work in the present? Let's say

I think there's a lot in that. I mean, I think there's a lot in there that I think is really important. I think because the structure is intentionally not that rigid, of the choir, I mean, and kind of how the song and also of the songs, and how the songs work, like they, you know, they're written, they're rhythmic, but they're not, kind of like, you know, they're not noted. They're not noted in the traditional sense.

I think it being from the kind of ground for it being a kind of, you know, a singing practice that anybody can kind of quite quickly pick up. And, you know, it kind of relies on, you know, very kind of consistent rhythm, the call and response as well, the most common device in terms of how they work, obviously. So I think because of that, it kind of is a bit levelling.

What I'm trying to say is, you kind of get to a point where, where you see the people around you and you kind of, you're kind of there with them in a bit more of a kind of honest way.

I think maybe this is a good chance to head into our second song, Hellcats. Rhys, is there anything that you want to say about Hellcats before we like how it was made?

Yeah, totally, thank you. Yeah. So this one was written by one of our long standing members, Seth Sefer and Penrose, and it's kind of the rhythm and the structure and the kind of musicalities is influenced by a couple of different traditional shanties. But what's really amazing is the content is this kind of reimagining of the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Reed two female pirates from the 18th century and their capers, they went on around around the Caribbean with other pirates like Calico Jack, and kind of just exploring the queerness of their of their existence, the kind of, you know, the non normative way they live their lives. It's just kind of amazing.

So we'll, we'll give that a listen, and we'll see you back in about three minutes.

Work: Hell Cats

Hell Cats (Girls Will Be Boys) - Lyrics by Sef Penrose
Key: D#

Hey, did you hear about Mary and Anne?
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Bold in britches, tough as any men
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

Mary joined the King’s Navy, flogged at the mast
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Joined the King’s Army, fought to the last
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

{Chorus}:
Hey! Girls will be boys, girls, boys will be girls
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Out on the high seas, it’s anyone’s world
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

For Anne in Carolina life was too slow
Weigh hey, girls will be girls
She ran away to sea with a no-good beau
Boys will be boys, girls, boys

To Providence Island, and Calico Jack
Weigh hey, boys will be girls
Jack takes boys and girls on deck and in the sack
Boys will be girls, boys, girls

{Chorus}

Mary took the King’s shilling, back to the sea
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
But taken by pirates, she swears their creed,
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

Anne takes a shine to the new recruit
Weigh hey, girls will be girls
Hot with a cutlass, a tough young brute
Boys will be boys, girls, boys

{Chorus}

Say what you like about Handsome Jack Rackham
Weigh hey, boys will be girls
Gives up his cabin for the hell cats’ passion
Boys will be girls, boys, girls

But here’s the King’s Navy, ready to bombard ‘em
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Forced into shore, will they take the King’s Pardon?
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

No! Girls will be boys, girls, boys will be girls
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Out on the high seas, it’s anyone’s world
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

Grab the Guv’nor’s sloop, hide out in Jamaica
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
But here’s Captain Barnet determined to take ‘er
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

Jack and the crew three sheets to the wind
Weigh hey, boys will be girls
Anne and Mary fight, but the sails are untrimmed
Boys will be girls, boys, girls

{Chorus}:

Hey! Girls will be boys, girls, boys will be girls
Weigh hey, girls will be boys
Out on the high seas, it’s anyone’s world
Girls will be boys, girls, boys

Mary and Anne both say they’re with child
Weigh hey, girls will be girls
Spared the gallows, but Anne’s still wild
Girls will be girls, boys, girls

‘Tis a hanging judge sends the crew to their god
Weigh hey, boys will be boys
“If they’d fought like men, they’d not hang like dogs”
Dogs will be dogs, cats, dogs

{Chorus} [X2]

Conversation

I really, really enjoy that one. It's got, like, quite a strong vibrato in terms of the call and response that we're speaking about before in the sea shanties.

I think one of the things that we've been circling around, but haven't spoken about directly yet, is how being at sea was kind of spaces of escape for queer people, historically, and thinking about that structure of the sea shanty in terms of how it would be rewritten again and again based on the crew that was singing as a way to foster camaraderie between the sailors. And choirs also imply the same structures of a crew or a family dynamic, and I'm thinking about that in relation to sort of this idea of chosen family. You know, it's kind of a very real practice for many queer people.

I want to ask about how the dynamics of this choir, as the choir fluxes. You know, we've spoken about this before. How does that affect how the shanties are sung, kind of so we have some recordings, right? But that's a particular time in the choir's life. You know, do you see those songs changing in time based on maybe your experience of them, or of new members coming into the choir, or if the choir is very…the people in the choir are very much coming from one place or a certain gender, or so forth.

I mean, yeah, so what they do is kind of like the headline is that, yes, they do change over time, actually, and depending on who's seeing them and and also even even the same person seeing them over time, that then that's what actually… this year I noticed it, or this past year, I noticed it a couple of times where, where you specifically notice it kind of more than anywhere else, is where you start to notice people kind of start to go back and rewrite areas of their kind of like shanties that we've maybe been singing for, like, one or two years already, or maybe longer, and they've kind of gone back and they maybe reworked a few lines.

Or then, obviously, on top of that, new members have come in, and new harmonies are formed in the kind of like in the music side of it. But the surprising area, but I think is really fascinating, is also how we construct our set lists when we do our performances, because… So Ben, who wrote the song we're going to hear next, he wrote this song tip the brandy, which is an intriguing Polari term, and is a very bouncy song, and it's very kind of bawdy, and people kind of do get quite involved with it, especially when we tell them what the Polari word means, and they we often kind of kept that the at the end of our of our set list and so…

And recently, Ben kind of was actually kind of rather than come earlier in the set. And it was for a number of reasons, for kind of his vocal needs, but also because of how he was feeling, the response in the room as well. And I think that's really interesting, is like those are the sorts of changes that kind of happen, is kind of it's because we're all there, and we're all kind of gaging how we're we're singing with each other, how we're kind of harmonising with each other, how the structure is working with one another. So we're constantly kind of adapting and kind of making those kinds of small adjustments, but it can also, yeah, it can also change just from person to person.

And I think that's really amazing, because in terms of the kind of chosen, chosen family side of that, like that family kind of unit within the choir, that is very much there. And I think we do end up kind of coexisting in that way and looking after each other in that sort of way. And it's not like it's there's not necessarily kind of like a structure to that in a kind of hierarchical sense, but just more in a sense of there's a mutual kind of sense of how we look after each other and how that comes across in the music, and what that means in the music.

Because also, it can also be in the space that we're performing, that can change it as well. You know, if one venue or one kind of crowd, you know, one audience kind of feels a bit more kind of, let's say, not that supportive, that can really affect how the songs happen, but also how we work with each other to make them happen. And there's often a lot of there's often a lot to wash up after kind of big gigs, especially at kind of like festivals that kind of aren't necessarily specifically aimed at queer audiences,

Because you come across some stuff.

yeah, I can, I can, well, I can, well imagine and things that people think are not derogatory or not cruel, but quite being stuck in many conversations . One question I have is with the writing of the sea shanties. How does that come about so kind of, obviously the first shanty we listened to was one that you wrote, and was kind of, I guess feels like part of the initial proposal towards this project as an artist project that is also a choir.

But then Hellcats was written by members of the choir. And do the members suggest that they want to come and write something? Do they approach you? Do they just do it like, how does that because it's not a hierarchy, right?

So, yeah, no, exactly. So we haven't done it for a little while now, but we… to begin with, and for a long time, we kind of would check in and have kind of like writing sessions together, where we would come to a table and just kind of bring any ideas we've got songs that we, you know, kind of “oh, I want to write a song”, you know, about this particular…

Well, you know, I wanted to write the song about lions den, and I took that into one of our kind of workshop groups, and I was kind of like, when I was trying to kind of resolve some of the lyrics to just, kind of like, sound it out with people. But also a lot of them, and probably the bulk of them up to now, have happened… Just people have kind of brought, like, literally, I kind of just encourage people to write. And they brought them to choir, and they've kind of gone, “okay, I've written this song”. And, you know, the number one way I always suggest to people of writing is I kind of go, “Well, go away and, you know, find a shanty that you really like and then maybe use that as a way of and use that as your kind of like framework, and then just completely rewrite it.”

And that's, you know, you know, I will, and different members will actually kind of also go and do workshops with different groups as well outside of the choir. And kind of, that will be our kind of methodology will kind of go, here's, you know, here's a shanty that's kind of got quite an understandable rhythm, or structure, you know, and write it about something that you know, that comes from your lived experience.

So that's, that's often how that happens but I think what's amazing is that then, yeah, we do have these moments of kind of like writing and rewriting together, and that happens, you know, as a deliberate thing, as a, kind of like a setup thing. But also it happens just as we're rehearsing as well. We'll just go through and go, “Oh, actually, these lines are a bit clunky. And, you know, yeah, what if it is this as well?” And also, because we're all, we're also learning of each other as well all the time in terms of what, what language we should be using with each other, or what kind of, you know, what things are important for us all to kind of talk about in terms of where we live, or, you know, how oppressed we are as a community.

This kind of brings me on to the next question, which is more around, I guess, kind of the social currency or trending of shanties in recent years. In 2020/2021, Nathan Evans posted his reworking of the Weller Man on Tiktok, and it kind of went viral, and lots of people were dueting him and remixing him, kind of doing a similar thing to what you just said, like adding their own lyrics, changing things for the shanty to make sense to them. And you know, as… when we were talking about inviting you on, it made me think about all these other times in my life that I've heard shanties, but specifically, more in recent years, I feel like it's had quite a resurgence since lockdown, I would say in things like Tiktok, but also in video games like Assassin's Creed, Black Flag. I don't know if you've played it, but it's quite incredible. You collect shanties by finding lyrics to them. And then they help, I don't know what, I don't know what the term is, but they help to kind of elevate your experience of being on a ship in the game. You know that they're sung on the ship. They're kind of these collectibles that you have.

And I was also thinking about, I mean, you will probably remember this, but that meme of these four kind of lads in skinny jeans with that sea shanty that was that felt quite derogatory, I suppose, towards the culture of singing in choirs, but also, more specifically, to shanties. And I'm just wondering how you feel about that? Because what you're doing is a bit more radical, I would say, than what Tiktok is doing. I will also say that the Tiktok videos I've seen, at least from Nathan, you know, they're kind of black and white. They have a certain aesthetic, they have a certain vibe. Whereas, you know, your choir has a very colorful outfit that you wear when you perform. So yeah, I guess my question is, what do you think of all of that?

[laughs]

Yeah, or like, where, where does like in, I guess, in the cultural resurgence of sea shanties where do you place, what you're doing within, within, yeah, that that world where they're starting to resurge.

Totally, that's so great. That's, there's so much in there, so great, not least the Assassin's Creed thing. Because, yeah, I didn't know about that. And then it came up in my research. And I then, I then bought it, because I not long, not long previous to that, got back into PlayStation as a thing. And I was quite blown away because of because…. And it also taught me a lot of shanties that I've not heard, which we now sing at the choir. So, it's quite an interesting device. And yeah, I…

Because I don't really, I don't engage with Tiktok, particularly at all I don't.. It sounds really sad but I don't really understand it. So I didn't, it kind of passed me by. I'd heard, Weller Man. I'd heard that being remixed. I'd seen the meme of the guys in skinny jeans. And, yeah, when I started doing the research this project, I kind of, I came across this term shantytok, of this kind of like moment that shanties had had on on Tiktok, and was like, oh, okay, so that's why this Nathan and… just to kind of, just for any, any kind of shanty purists out there, I will have to point out that, Weller Man is actually a wailing song and not considered a shanty. So there we go. That's, that's it, but you're right, but that was that, that was the moment, and that was something that kind of was, was really huge. And I found it really kind of confusing. I couldn't, well, not confusing. But I found it kind of interesting, because there was something about it that kind of…

When all of that was happening. There was something about it that seemed like, it seemed like there's a lot of stuff right now, there's a lot, and it is linked to, it is kind of linked to, kind of some broader folk revivalism, but like there's kind of something that's happened over the past few years where certain traditions like that have kind of been reassessed, you know, they've kind of having a different life, and people are using them in a different way. And there's parts of that that are kind of really great, and there's parts of that that are really problematic.

And there was something about elements of the shanty, kind of like the online shanty resurgence, that felt kind of quite problematically and quite belligerently male, if that's like, they felt a bit there's, but there's an element of it that felt a bit toxic, which was kind of like, which maybe spurred me on a bit when I was doing my research, and I was kind of like, you know what, I think that's why this could be a much better queer space because the whole narrative of sea shanties, is kind of like inherently queer, you know, kind of a group of men on a boat at sea for very long time singing songs together to get through. It's kind of like there's quite, there's quite a queer vibe.

And it was, deliberately, you know, in the pirate, in the pirate tradition, you know, you kind of had the Matelotage, you know, the same sex marriages that happened on ships and all that sort of stuff that was kind of very much within that. But, yeah, I think

the creation of a republic, like a pirate, yeah, like it was, yeah, yeah,

Exactly, exactly. But I think to kind bring that back to your question, I suppose, like, I think there is a sense of escapism in it. I think, and I or maybe, if not, at least there's also, there's also something maybe, maybe to be more kind to it, maybe it's about being hopeful, or maybe it's about being kind of admitted, like, being aware of, kind of like the challenges that faces kind of in the real world right now, geopolitically, and everything else,. Like actually looking backwards to those sorts of, like, potentially, you know, nostalgic, you know, kind of folk revival they offer us a chance to think about a time where we didn't have to, where we didn't have that worry. And the worry was, the worry was very different. Or the kind of, you know, I think, I think there's a lot of that in there for me, yeah.

I wonder if it's also because the lyrics almost kind of wash over you. When I'm listening to them, when I encounter them, it's very much like that. I mean, you kind of get into this flow and it's like… I don't know, there's something about the way they are sung. Yeah, it's hypnotizing, especially like the harmonies and stuff. I think people are just genuinely it's just quite they're just quite pleasing to listen to as well. So it might just be as basic as that is that they're just great to listen to. You know, when someone can sing really well, or can harmonise well, or is in rhythm, there's just something about that that is nice to listen to and be part of.

But I'm also thinking about it, like the difference of… we're listening to recordings today, of course, right? But I'm thinking about the difference of seeing the choir perform live, or like being in the choir as you're singing, and like being an audience member, where you can sing along, if you have, you know, having the songbook as well. Which is something that's very different to me than the kind of shanties being part of, like, let's say, different types of screen culture.

It is kind of like something that breaks it out of time, perhaps in it in a way. And then, when you're talking about histories that are often glossed over, you know, as you're saying, kind of this pirate culture as being one that is inherently queer, we have historical examples we can point to in this. But it's also like, if you really think about a group of men being out at sea for many months with no one there, you know… kind of almost like there's something about, like an attempt to remove, kind of this toxic masculinity from the discourse somehow, through proving that there are other versions that exist.

That feels like there's something about what you're doing is like, sort of like reclaiming, like the shanty, in terms of, like, a queer history, but also, like in Rebecca, your example, in Assassin's Creed, also this idea in like, I guess, like online, online video, like virtual culture is like, also this idea of capitalism, like the idea of collecting, like sea shanties as being something you collect and hoard, or whatever, like that. So there's, like, you're kind of trying to bring it back to what it was doing. So I think, yeah, there's something a reclaiming of it

That's definitely the intention, because you know, history doesn't include those narratives, you know, in terms of, like, the people that live then they, you know, the dominant histories don't have the narratives of so many, you know, queer lives. And so it's like, well, how do we bring that back into those spaces where they were missing previously.

And there's something utopic about that, right? There's something kind of like, there's like, a reimagined future or reimagined present, I suppose, as well reimagined… it's about kind of like taking that on, and you see that, you know, as it happens in in practice, you know, you go to, kind of see, like, we go to, like, sea shanty festivals, and, you know, we kind of with, with a queer group. And kind of people take that, they people take that in different ways, you know, we're kind of there and, you know, these kind of, like, like you mentioned, like, we have these costumes that kind of use, kind of quite deliberately use the Trans Pride flag colors from, you know, obviously, from perspective of, you know, wider solidarity.

And, you know, it can be quite confronting some audiences, and that's cool, you know, because we kind of, because we're kind of taking that back from, from whatever they're kind of, like, parochial, bigoted view of the world is we're kind of taking that back from them, and kind of going, “No, we were there too. We were there too, and we're there now, and it's fine, and let's have, let's have a fun time with that, and let's have a laugh.” And that can be a really warm, you know, space where we can be inclusive together and make fun of each other in a kind of mutual way, and a way that's not kind of plunging down.

Something that I'm really interested in is also like the physical power, like, historically, of a sea shanty, like the idea that a song can move a massive ship, and that's sort of like, I guess, the use function of a song it's like, such a great example, because it's so physical and it's so material, it's not about, you know, the power of winning over people's hearts, which is sort of what, well, I guess what we've been talking about in terms of, like, the sort of lulling, or like, hypnotising that a song can do, but also that you can sort of hypnotise the materials, I guess, as well.

And so I'm kind of interested in sort of where you think that kind of power can be harnessed within a sort of queer sea shanty. Looking forward, like, do you have any ideas or hopes of like, what kind of function a sea shanty, and specifically a queer sea shanty group could have today?

One of the first places we performed in public was a pub in Plymouth called the Minerva Inn. And, you know, it reports itself as being the oldest pub in Plymouth, and it's kind of very little, kind of low ceiling sort of pub, a really lovely space. I've been going there since I moved to Plymouth but it's also kind of, maybe not a queer space. And it's not like an excluding space. But it's also not an excluding space…

You wouldn’t make out with your boyfriend there basically.

No, exactly. And although I am talking about a few years ago, and actually, maybe now, it's a bit different, I don't know, but like, in terms of what the vibe is there.

So I wanted us to perform that, because I loved it as a space and because it kind of had the right vibe, but I went into it's a little bit of trepidation, because I was like, I don't know how this is gonna go down. And what was really amazing was afterwards, I was outside, and this woman came up to me, who was a regular there, and was of an older generation. And I was really bowled over, because she was like, “Oh, this is so amazing. To see you guys are kind of you're so funny, and it's so amazing to see young people do this and bring this, bring these traditions back in this new way.” And I was like, “wow, okay, that is not the reaction I was kind of like, anticipating from this space”, and that's kind of really amazing to see, is kind of how it upends my expectations.

But also we're out there kind of bringing that message to different spaces, and bringing our stories to those different spaces. And I think that's, I think that's kind of the most, that's the most helpful thing it can do now, because I think as we see global politics kind of becoming more kind of turned away or turned against, LGBTQ+ people, I think the more we can kind of imbue it in kind of the most unexpected places, the more we can kind of offer those beacons of hope as things get gnarly.

Do you feel like there was a shift in the choir after the Supreme Court ruling last year about the biological definition of a woman?

Yeah, yes, yes, definitely, definitely. And it changed, or change is maybe the wrong word, but it definitely had an influence on some of our performances. There have been new songs that have come out of it, from some of our members that are really amazing, that kind of like… really start to kind of broaden out what transness looks like, and what a limitation on kind of an understanding of gender actually can do, and what that can do to somebody's life growing up, and what that can do to a person as they grow into themselves.

And, you know, that's really amazing, because you know that we're able to express that, and we're able to come together and share that story and then take that out to audiences. And you know, that's quite empowering.

I wonder if that's a good point to move on to the third and final shanty that we're listening to today, in terms of thinking about how, how these shanties provide spaces for the varieties of representation of what it means to be queer. So we're going to listen to this shanty. I've my own suggestions too which is about three minutes long. Is there anything we should know about this shanty before we listen?

So I mentioned him a bit earlier. This one was written by Ben Dhoni, and it is just amazing… It's not like a rewritten traditional shanty; it doesn't follow any kind of like… No, it does, but it's not obviously, in a kind of like shanty form, in terms of, like, the tone of it, but it's a really amazing expression of the experience of being an asexual person, and kind of what that looks like in the world, and what that looks like against a hyper sexualized backdrops. So, yeah, it's really great, great.

So we'll listen to that, and we'll see you back in three minutes.

Work: I've My Own Suggestions Too

I’ve My Own Suggestions Too - Lyrics by Ben Doney

At sea, boys dreamt, of Millbay maids,

While I dwelled on our game of cards.

For it seems I drew the Ace of Spades,

Not the randy Jack of Hearts!

Oh, my darling now I’m home ashore,

There are things you’d like to do,

Though you’ve waited near 3 months or more,

I’ve my own suggestions too.

{Chorus}

At sea, boys dreamt, of Millbay maids,

While I dwelled on our game of cards.

For it seems I drew the Ace of Spades,

Not the randy Jack of Hearts!

Oh, I fancy a stroll along the coast,

‘Praps Wembury, Freathy or Looe?

Skimmers, shells, and glass, who’d find the most?

Waves crashed and them winds blew!

{Chorus}

Oh, I’d like to go for a moorland hike,

See if us can spot a pony.

But you roll your eyes cos’ you think that’s trite,

You’ve got finer views to show me!

{Chorus}

I suggest we cruise on down the Yealm,

Take our cossies for a swim.

But there’s another place in this fair realm

You’d rather I cannon-ball in!

{Chorus}

I’d rather learn how a pasty’s made,

Watch a baker knead the lard in!

I’ve no interest in your linen’s grade,

Nor a wander through your garden!

{Chorus}

Why don’t we head down to the pub?

Have a pint of ale of scrumpy?

Will you concede with a playful nudge?

For despite my quirks, you love me!

{Final Chorus} [X2]:

At sea, my love, I’ll dream of you,

With a full and thankful heart,

For you chose this hand, this Ace of Spades,

Not a randy Jack of Hearts!

Conversation

Welcome back and thank you for listening to I've my own suggestions too. Just to wrap some things up, because we're sort of running out of time now, which is really sad, and we want to obviously, they've got so many more questions. In a lot of your work, Rhys, you speak about, or you use Polari, and we've sort of touched on it throughout the conversation. And I'm wondering whether, whether you could speak a little bit more about the history of Polari and why you've chosen to use it?

Yeah, I think it's because we live in a time where language is ever more important in terms of nuance. I guess it's another revival, isn't it? I suppose, like, it's a more recent folk revival.

So it's a slang language that has a kind of potentially really, really long history in terms of where it's what its roots are, sort of been used by itinerant communities, you know, since the 17th century. And then in the sort of early 20th century, the kind of, what I refer to as Polari was kind of developed by gay men in well, predominantly gay men in Western Europe. And it was a way of gay people talking to each other about homosexual life or queer life in public whilst avoiding detection, sorry, and doing that, you know, hiding in plain sight, I suppose.

And I think I was really into… I've always been quite interested about it, since I learned about it when I was kind of, you know, a few years Well, yeah, sort of 10-15, years ago. And I've kind of used the odd words or kind of like, brought the odd bit into different work before, but this is the first time I was like, well, it's such a language driven form, the shanty that actually Polari and kind of bringing in that is quite a helpful device, because it's kind of, it's kind of a way of us being able to kind of put certain things in front of people without them knowing, and then being able to then talk about that and go, “Well, this is what we've just been singing”.

And we don't, we don't hold salons around the songs, but it kind of, we offer, we offer the opportunity for people to kind of go away and look at that and kind of go, okay. And even, and often, even in the act of even, kind of going away, even doing light research, you know, there's a lot of humor in it, because a lot of its very kind of filthy language, and it is very sexualised, which is kind of, and it's very kind of like male orientated.

But what I find interesting is like heterosexual audiences, who then kind of interact with that. They're always surprised that they knew, they kind of know other words from Polari that have kind of crossed over into kind of like general use, which kind of happened, certainly in England, in the kind of like, start of the 70s, when comedians started to kind of use it.

The word naff was originally Polari?

Exactly.

And do you know what though, it also reminds me of algo speak. So, like, using… instead of saying sex, it's S, E, double, G, S, like, it feels like a modern day Polari or something.

That's interesting.

Like, Avoiding getting shadow banned, but then in this case its avoiding being arrested. To be fair, is also used by, in particular, trans women online are kind of very careful with how they will present or kind of speak about their individual transness, like the types of the algo speak that they'll use, or, like, even, I know if people are talking about, like a march, like, kind of, particularly the protests that happened straight after the Supreme Court ruling last year, about the biological definition of a woman, like, also a lot of those online forums they used, they didn't say like T R A, N S, they use like T R @ N S because then it wouldn't be shadow bound, and then it would spread to a wider audience. So I think these two things are always, always overlapping.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's really interesting. And I think, actually, I think comedians like Kenneth Williams in the sort of late 60s, early 70s, used Polari in a kind of almost similar way, where they kind of used it within their comedy, and there was kind of like a campness, kind of within that, that kind of like meant that they, they kind of got through as it were, they kind of like society kind of accepted the humor in it, because they kind of could go, “oh, well, that's kind of like camp and therefore it's clear and it's different. And so I can laugh at that, because it kind of feels like I'm laughing with them, right?”

And I think that's really interesting, because I think I still see that in our audiences now, where I kind of recognise words or whatever they kind of, there is an element of kind of, the kind of straights in the room, kind of like laughing along. But like, whether there's a kind of like sense, whether there's a slight sense of nervousness in that laugh, I don't always know, but like, there is a kind of like…

Or whether they're just laughing because everyone else is laughing.

Exactly, exactly, or whether they feel like, genuinely, “oh, I'm being shown something here about your community that kind of is very for you, but you're letting me in a kind of, like a generous act.” Which, you know, there is an element of that too. Like,I think the deliberate act is to kind of open out, you know, like the queer community, for us to be visible and to not be kind of like not, you know, to kind of like,

not judge someone for what they don't know.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Ignorance. Ignorance and malice are different things. Deliberate ignorance is something else, of course, but you know, if someone's deliberately miss-pronouning you, that's an aggression that you can walk away from. If someone genuinely doesn't understand there is a sense of meeting it with curiosity, not always. Obviously, there's like personal capacity, right? But yeah.

That's wonderful. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself exactly that, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I love that.

It's a conversation I navigate most days.

[laughs]

Yeah, well, sadly, I think we're gonna have to stop there. Rhys, it's been like, thank you so much for sharing your work on the show.

Thank you.

It's been great to learn about, like, the life of Seaweed in the Fruit Locker, like the group, and the work.

Can we come sing with you in Plymouth?

100% 100% any old time. Yes. Let's make that happen. Let's make that happen.

Do you have any gigs that you want to plug?

W4ll not specific dates and times, but I can definitely say like if we will probably be at some prides this summer, and we'll definitely be at things like Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival, where we kind of try to be there every year, because it's always a good it's always a good laugh. So yeah, there's always things like that. Yeah, keep an eye out.

We have an Instagram account. So that's @seaweedshanties and my website as well… I'm going to try and keep it a bit more updated with stuff for this year. And yeah, and my social media as well. So yeah, but we're mostly on Instagram. That's our kind of most commonly used thing because it seems to be the one that's kind of like, consistently, not that problematic all the time.

Depending where you're listening from we'll tag Rhys's website and his Instagram in the caption of this episode.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, see you next time!

Large Format Transcript