They were notably influenced by songs of shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs.
The music has since appeared at early folk festivals, and by the late 1970s, the activities of enthusiasts and scholar-performers at places like the Mystic Seaport Museum (who initiated an annual Sea Music Festival in 1979) and the San Francisco Maritime Museum established sea music—inclusive of shanties, sea songs, and other maritime music—as a genre with its own circuit of festivals, record labels, performance protocol, and so on.
A great many of the performers of shanties do so in what might be distinguished as a "folk music" style, often accompanied by guitar and banjo.
Some shanties are performed in a "classical" choir style (like the Robert Shaw Chorale).
[1][2] The following lists may have some overlap: The following categories are related: The following table is a selection of the European event calendar remso.eu - Shanty- festivals with more than 4 performers (groups) only.