Alan Lomax Archive | Andros Island fishermen: Blow Liza Blow (1935) @AlanLomaxArchive | Uploaded January 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
A boat-launching chantey by a group of sponge fishermen (unidentified except for David Pryor), recorded by Alan Lomax at the home of Elisha Portier, Grantstown, Nassau, Bahamas, August 1935.
As a retired Andros sponger Emperor MacKenzie explained to Lomax in 1979:
"The spongeman sing Sunday evening time when they anchor together. There's a bay named Gold Cay [on the west side of Andros]. They'll come in Saturday morning and they'll [process] their sponge, put him in the kraal, and they'll clean up the vessel and they go and get water. Then they'll haul their dinghies on deck and go sleep. Sunday morning everybody go shore and they'll keep church from eleven till about two. Then they go back 'board and get their dinners. Now, when it get to five o' clock, twenty vessel in Gold Cay, they'll get 'board them schooner and they'll sing — nothing but Christian song. When the moon shine, they'd be on deck in the cool, some boat 'round just listenin'. Each song last fifteen minutes."
A boat-launching chantey by a group of sponge fishermen (unidentified except for David Pryor), recorded by Alan Lomax at the home of Elisha Portier, Grantstown, Nassau, Bahamas, August 1935.
As a retired Andros sponger Emperor MacKenzie explained to Lomax in 1979:
"The spongeman sing Sunday evening time when they anchor together. There's a bay named Gold Cay [on the west side of Andros]. They'll come in Saturday morning and they'll [process] their sponge, put him in the kraal, and they'll clean up the vessel and they go and get water. Then they'll haul their dinghies on deck and go sleep. Sunday morning everybody go shore and they'll keep church from eleven till about two. Then they go back 'board and get their dinners. Now, when it get to five o' clock, twenty vessel in Gold Cay, they'll get 'board them schooner and they'll sing — nothing but Christian song. When the moon shine, they'd be on deck in the cool, some boat 'round just listenin'. Each song last fifteen minutes."
