Sea Music: The Launching of the MIT Chantey Sing
This past Sunday, February 2006, we had 70 people at our monthly chantey sing at the MIT Museum. One of them was a reporter from the Boston Globe who asked me the usual questions about how the sing got started, and how I got into this. It's such a long story, I said...I've loved water, music, and boats as long as I can remember, and to love something is to sing about it. But if I had to trace a line on a map of how I got from there to here, now is as good a time as any to point out some landmarks along the voyage. This sing may be newly afloat, but it's got a good 30 years of my life for a hawser, with the lives of many more folk braided into the rope. 1974-81: Growing up on the Charles River in Natick and Newton, I was a certified lifeguard and paddling instructor by age 16. I taught canoeing on Cape Breton Island and later on the Connecticut River (Dartmouth '81). A strong voice is as useful for teaching water sports as it is for leading songs, and I soon learned t...