Songs of the Great Lakes

[jasonb]

This is a great album of the singing tradition of sailors on the Great Lakes. As a musician who performs music from the region, I sing "The E.C. Roberts" pretty frequently. It's part of a genre of songs that recounts voyages in terms of geographical features passed along the way, forming a lyrical map of the route. In this case, the Roberts is a cargo schooner that leaves Chicago to pick up iron ore in in Escanaba, Michigan and transports it to Cleveland. Schooners were used for cargo transport on the Lakes well into the early 20th century.



You can listen for free here:

https://folkways.si.edu/songs-of-the...um/smithsonian