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Is karaoke the modern sea shanty?

Containers are the nearly invisible carriers of 90% of the goods on earth \u2013 yet we know so little about them, or the people on board. The crew who power globalisation, are unsung heroes. Now we hear them sing, and capture something of that strange, lonely, heroic life.

Sea shanties are a relic of the past \u2013 today it\u2019s far more likely to be karaoke soothing the soul and powering the arm of the modern sea farer.\nInstead nearly all ships have a karaoke machine on board - and rumour has it, competition is ferocious. \nIn search of the modern sea shanty, Nathaniel Mann, award winning singer and song collector, who has long avoided taking part in karaoke, boards a state-of-the-art container ship in Gdansk shipyard\u2026 the Maribo Maersk, to sing along with the Filipino sea men, ship's cook Valiente, and able-seaman Ariel. \nHe also \u2018plays the ship\u2019 - discovering acoustic possibilities from the engine room to the Monkey Island (the platform above the bridge), attaching contact microphones which revel the rhythms hidden behind heavy metal walls.\nHe climbs out on the 'catwalk' to watch the stevedores at work, the giant cranes crashing a container into the hold every two minutes, 24 hours a day - until all 18,272 have been shifted - with all the complexity of a game of Tetrus.\n \nThe company offers mainly 5 month contracts to the 20 or so sailors on board, and discovering how the team pass those months at sea, Nathaniel hears tales of home-sickness, made even more poignant by the choice of songs the crew prefer to sing.

We hear from an international crew about life at sea in this giant vessel \u2013 you can\u2019t even hear the sea from the decks above. Tales of dark skies, longed for loved ones, learning the shape of the world from water - we hear a fluid mix of the sounds of the ship, the crew singing karaoke, and Nathan's own new songs, gleaned from his observations on board.

We also hear from Suffolk shanty singers Des and Jed, who wonder if karaoke might be an updated version of an older form of shanty. \n \nAbout the presenter: Nathaniel Mann is an experimental composer, sound artist, performer and sound designer - known both for his experimental trio Dead Rat Orchestra, and most recently as embedded composer at the Pitt Rivers Museum. He also won the Arts Foundation's 25th Anniversary Fellowship 2018.\nIn 2015 he won the George Butterworth Prize for Composition, and much of his experience as an accomplished and imaginative percussive master, as well as singer, will be integral to this programme - a symphony of singing, the sea, the ships and the songsters.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

With thanks to the crew of the Maribo Maersk, especially: \nChief Officer: Morten Fl\xf8jborg Hansen\nCPT: Stig Lindegaard Mikkelsen\n2nd Officer: Francis Umbay Dela Cerna\n4th Engineer: Campbell John Dooley\nChief Cook: Valiente Panopio Peralta\nAB: Ariel Dallarte Martin\n