Australia for UNHCR: The Reluctant Shanty
Not all sailors want to go to sea
The world's first reluctant sea shanty based on in-depth interviews with boat refugees from Iran, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
Sea shanties are 400 year old genre of folk song, that are more popular than ever on TikTok. So for World Refugee Day, we launched a new kind of shanty to celebrate a new kind of heroic sailor.
Not all sailors want to go to sea.
We partnered with Nathan Evans - the fresh, global face of sea shanty music, UK #1 artist, and TikTok megastar - to co-create ‘The Reluctant Shanty’ song. A track based on in-depth interviews with five reluctant sailors: boat refugees from Iran, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The survivor stories were painstakingly turned into a song and music video that honoured their resilience, hardship and courage, in close consultation with Australia for UNHCR.
“I didn’t want to break the border of Australia or come this way. No-one wants to leave the country they’re born in, their family, their friends. Just imagine what a person must do to put their life into a boat.”
Telling the harrowing survivor stories of real boat refugees.
