AS this year's Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival draws near, the Packet is having a closer look at some of the 66 groups that will be performing.

The festival takes place at venues across Falmouth between June 14 and 16.

Alongside the pubs, hotels and shops that will host music, there will be four main stages – at The Moor, Events Square, Custom House Quay and, new for this year, the Falmouth Packet stage at Prince of Wales Pier.

Among those performing will be The Cadgwith Singers, who started many years ago in the pub at Cadgwith with Buller and Hartley.

The singing has changed over the years and many of the original singers are now gone, sadly missed, and their voices too.

Their parts have been passed on to others who keep the traditional songs going. The songs are also changing a little.

What has not changed is the Friday night gathering to sing anything and everything.

These days the Cadgwith Singers are to be found singing in clubs, pubs, theatres and rugby matches all over Cornwall, wherever there is a convivial atmosphere and an audience that enjoys the unique, full-blooded style of singing that never fails to please. Further afield there have been tours to various south west counties, London, Ireland, France and the Czech Republic.

All this from a group of people who just get together for the pure enjoyment of singing and as their leader David Muirhead has said: “You must remember we’re not a choir, we’re just a group of friends who just get together to sing the songs we love to sing.”

Another well-known name on the bill is the Culdrose Military Wives Choir, attached to RNAS Culdrose in Helston.

It is one of the longest-standing in the international network that now comprises of 75 choirs in the UK and at bases abroad.

Inspired by Gareth Malone's success on TV series “The Choir” filmed at military bases in Devon, the Culdrose choir was formed in May 2012 and continues to go from strength to strength.

Its membership of more than 50 ladies has performed on Cornwall's most eminent stages and many of the County's major events. 

The Sing, Share, Support ethos of the choir is at the core of all they do, bringing together groups of women that help one another through the bad times, celebrate the good times and sing their way through it together.

In summer 2018 a new Military Wives Choirs album, ‘Remember’ was released. Reaching number two in the classical charts, it was a collaboration of all choirs across the network, including Culdrose, to commemorate the end of WW1.