John Kanaka from Shower Chanteys by Chris Maden
“John Kanaka” is a halyard chantey with an interesting debate; as I wrote to my backers after recording this:
The chantey “John Kanaka” is an interesting point of chantey nerdery. Many folk music fans, and many recording artists, sing the chorus as “John Kanaka-naka, too-rye-ay.” The “too-rye-ay” sounds like a good ol’ Irish folk song bit o’ nonsense.
However, Stan Hugill was notorious for interrupting performances to lecture the audience that “there’s no R in the Samoan language; it’s ‘too-LIE-ay!’” In Shanties from the Seven Seas, the Bible of sea chanteys, he writes, “The chorus is of Polynesian origin and I should say the words ‘tulai ē’ were Samoan.” Now, Stan was a polymath and polyglot, and definitely knew quite a bit about Polynesian languages (not to mention chanteys). That said, he was not a formal, rigorous scholar, and he provides no evidence nor citation for his assertion about the chorus here. He has proven to be wrong about a few other speculations, so everything in his book (which is, to be clear, invaluable) should be taken with a grain of salt.
… for more notes, see http://music.maden.org/index.php?title=John_Kanaka
Tracklist
| 10. | John Kanaka | 4:07 |
