Music Monday: Shallow Brown - Vienna Carroll

Vienna Carroll performs this version of Shallow Brown, a Caribbean sea shanty. Ms. Carroll has written a musical play about pre-Civil War Black sailors. The sea shanty Shallow Brown is a song by and about a Jamaican slave sold off to a Yankee ship owner, who is jumping ship to find a better life.  Shallow Brown shares the under-told story of the critical impact of Black sailors on the antebellum maritime economy and on the lives of the Black community and it highlights their activities in the Underground Railroad. Vienna presented an excerpt (and research journey) at the 39th Mystic Sea Music Festival Symposium in 2018 and debuted a full reading at the Langston Hughes House in Harlem in the Fall. She kicked off the first Langston Hughes playwright showcase to a packed house on May 3, 2019. Vienna was scheduled to perform at the Cold Springs Whaling Museum and at the 41st Mystic Sea Music Festival this year in 2020. http://shallowbrown.com/

​Vienna Carroll is a singer, playwright, actor, historian and herbalist. Vienna learned music from the Black Ladies of her youth, including her fearsome great grandmother who played guitar to country singer Minnie Pearl on Saturday night radio but only proper Pentecostal chords in church on Sunday.  Vienna also sang in the choir at her family’s AME church, and attended her godmother’s Baptist church.  At her Alabama grandmother’s 125 acre working farm, she listened to gospel and country on the radio and joined in the Sunday church services an hour’s drive away down a dusty road, where singing was often accompanied only by the hand clapping and shouting of its fervent members.  She later formalized her study of early African American music and culture at Yale University, where she received a BA in African American Studies. http://viennacarroll.com/
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SHALLOW BROWN - LYRICS

​Say I’m going away to leave you, Oh, Shallow Brown
Yes, I’m going away to leave you, Oh, Shallow Brown

Say I’m signed on to a whaler, Oh, Shallow Brown
I’m signed on for a sailor, Oh, Shallow Brown

Well I've got my clothes in order, Oh, Shallow Brown
‘Cause my packet leaves tomorrow, Oh, Shallow Brown

Say I love you Juliana, Oh, Shallow Brown
Yes I love you Juliana, Oh, Shallow Brown

Say my master’s gonna sell me, Oh, Shallow Brown
Says he’ll sell me to a Yankee, Oh, Shallow Brown

Says he’ll sell me for a dollar, Oh, Shallow Brown
A big, fat Spanish dollar, Oh, Shallow Brown

Gonna climb the Chili mountain, Oh, Shallow Brown
Gonna find the silver fountain, Oh, Shallow Brown

Say I’m bound away for to leave you, Oh, Shallow Brown
But I never will deceive you, Oh, Shallow Brown

Fare you well, my Juliana, Oh, Shallow Brown
Fare you well, my Juliana, Oh, Shallow Brown

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Thanks to HRMM volunteer Mark Heller for sharing his knowledge of Hudson River music history for this series.

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