Northern Neck Chantey Singers

The Northern Neck Chantey Singers are a group of retired African American watermen from Northumberland and Lancaster Counties on Virginia’s Northern Neck, preserving the work songs of the Chesapeake Bay menhaden fishery. Led by Dr. Elton Smith Jr. of Shacklefords, Virginia, the ensemble has included Edward Taylor, William Muse, Lloyd Hill, Christopher Harvey, James Carter, Lewis R. Blackwell Jr., and Joseph Wood Jr.

The group was organized in 1991 by William Hudnall at the request of the Greater Reedville Association, drawing on men who had worked the menhaden boats out of Reedville, Virginia over a fifty-year span beginning in the 1930s. The menhaden industry on the Northern Neck employed predominantly African American crews who sang call-and-response chanteys while hauling heavy nets by hand, a tradition that nearly disappeared when hydraulic power blocks replaced the work in the mid-twentieth century.

The group has performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Richmond National Folk Life Festival, the Chicago Maritime Festival, the Delaware Watermen’s Museum, and the Maine Folk Life Festival, among other venues.

See also The Menhaden Chanteymen, the related North Carolina group who documented the same tradition from the Beaufort, NC side of the fishery.