Chantey Singers of South Street - Al Ceunin 2/18/2006

Hillary Zaenchik

February 29, 2006

ENG 352-106

Assignment for class #5

Project

Chantey Singers of South Street - Al Ceunin 2/18/2006

Q. How did it start?

A. It started September of 1995. We had the first sing on the after deck of the Peking.

Some of the first organizers were Bill Beaker, who was the ship keeper of the Wavertree, and Simon Spaulding who visiting from Mystic.

The first sing was scheduled to be held on Pier 15, but was relocated to the afterdeck

Peaking. We had over 100 people show up. We would get the whole crew from Pioneer to show up.

We moved to Seamans Church Institute in January of ’96. For the first 4 years the group got bigger, and then the attendance leveled off. We’ve gotten down to solid core of people. Right now our future plans are to keep going.

Some of the early singers that eventually went out on their own were the Johnson Girls-

Bonnie, Andie, and Jay. Another group that came out of the Chantey sings was the NY

Packet, who consisted of the following members: Frank Weorner, Jan Christensen, among others.

There is a consolidated scheduled on Yahoo that lists the meeting dates for the South

Street Seaport, New England Chantey Sing, MIT in Boston, Baltimore and Portsmouth,

NH. We had a visitor from the San Francisco group and he said he was amazed at the level of participation that we got at our sing, verses at his it is much more a performers and audience listening. We also had some people come in from York, England, who were pub singers. They have a lot of folk music there. We asked them to put us in their newsletter and they did.

No current plan, but we would like to grow.

No clear dates set, as it at the discretion of the SCI. Site specific. As a group, we don’t go to other venues. But there have been people who have used the group to gain confidence and grow. Sometimes people will come to the sings for a long time before they will lead a song. And they keep coming back.