Deep Blue Sea.

Deep Blue Sea (my version)

I'd like to present ATS with a song I have been working. It is a traditional American folk song that has done a lot of evolving over the years. The best known version is by Odetta. The song is said to have Caribbean origins alongside songs like "All My Trials". Odetta was a major influence on artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Alongside Pete Seeger she pioneered the Greenwich Village folk scene in the late 50s and early 60s. Odetta never achieved quite the limelight of Dylan and Baez. If you listen to her music and know the music of early Dylan and Baez then you will clearly hear her influence coming through. She continued to make music all her life and died in 2008.

The lyrics of my own version are written as a record of the fate of so many North African refugees that have recently drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Italy and Greece, so many it shocked the whole of the EU into joining up to help Italy deal with this humanitarian catastrophe. The refugees are running away from the war and terror that is rampaging through this region as we know. Obviously things must be so bad they are willing to risk death at the hands of the sea rather than continue to suffer the lives they are attempting to escape. These people have been drowning in their thousands. Italy and Greece are inundated with refugees as it stands. They are flooding the Greek Islands. It is a terrible humanitarian problem.

That is why I am still so passionately fond of folk music. Folk music records so many human experiences. These days it has lost out to commercial music and certainly not encouraged by mainstream media because of its subject matter. Pete Seeger was treated quite mean. He was black listed as a communist and didn't get the mainstream red carpet treatment because of his views and values.

My version is not for commercial gain. It can be fully streamed from the link I gave you. It can be downloaded free if you are a member of bandcamp I think. I don't make any money out of music. I have been making music for thirty years now. I love to write my own songs, make up my own versions of folk songs and the like.

The lyrics for my version are:

"Deep blue sea, baby
Deep blue sea
That's where I got drownded
In the deep blue sea.

Lower me down, darlin'
Lower me down
Like an anchor and a chain
To the deep blue sea.

Deep blue sea, baby
Deep blue sea
That's where I got drownded
In the deep blue sea.

Ran from our homes, darlin'
Ran from our homes
To flee with our families
To the deep blue sea.

Deep blue sea, baby
Deep blue sea
That's where we got drownded
In the deep blue sea."

These days I am having fun with a mandolin. I have recorded the song here for you just with a simple mandolin backing.