April Coffeehouse Concert Features Traditional Songs of the Sea

A Gleam off Paradise: Songs, Poems & Stories for a Sea-Gazed Wanderer

“There’s a Lantern at the Landing, There’s a Gleam off Paradise.

There’s a Window in the Harbor like an Old Man’s Blinking Eyes.”

On Thursday, April 5 at 7:00 pm the Camden Public Library will present balladeer and chanteyman Stephen Sanfilippo in a concert of songs of the sea as the Maritime Month Coffeehouse. The cost will be $10 at the door. Refreshments will be served. Stephen has collected and performed traditional maritime songs since the early 1970s. A United States Navy Vietnam Era veteran, and an educator with a Ph.D. in history, he has been teaching American maritime history at Maine Maritime Academy for the past six years. A regular interpreter of historic songs at Mystic Seaport’s Music of the Sea festival, he has performed at cultural and historic venues as far afield as from Prince Edward Island to St. Vincent & the Grenadines.

Stephen’s program will include many previously lost songs discovered through his own research in obscure archives in Downeast Maine and on his native Long Island, New York. With accompaniment on 5-string banjo, Anglo concertina, and guitar, the songs tell of life on the shore, clamming, eeling, banks schooner fishing, whaling, and the Patriot side of the American Revolution. The audience will be encouraged to sing along on the many easily learned choruses. In addition to the songs, Stephen will recite short poems and read short entries made into 19th-century whalemen’s journals.

Whether you're looking for an entertaining concert, a captivating history lesson, or a way of getting in touch with your sea-girt environment, you’ll enjoy them all, with an added “a gleam off paradise.”

For information, please contact Stephen at: seasonghistory@gmail.com

Photos provided by Maine Windjammer Project
The Maine Windjammer Project started in 2007 to preserve the modern history of the Maine Windjammer and to make it available to the generations to come.

This historical archive is available to museums and for historical research.

For more info contact: dougmills@shootmainestudios.com

WATCH MAINE POSITIVE TV