44 - John the Slacker, Slacker

We love this song and it is an absolute favourite on all our nights!

But…'kanaka' is a word from the Hawai'ian for man, which came to be used in English to describe workers from the Pacific Islands who were employed by their colonisers. Sadly, in Australia it is a charged and hateful racist term, where descendants of kanakas are recognised to be even more disadvantaged than indigenous populations. This song gives some specific racial identity to complaints of mistreatment on the ocean, with a cheery melody.

We're not sure what to do with this one - we liked what the London Sea Shanty Collective had done with it at a recent workshop, replacing 'John Kanaka' with 'John, the slacker', so we've adopted that