Musician, scholar and educator Robert Young Walser’s musical career spans decades and continents. In the early 1980s he made his living as a shantyman (!) at Mystic Seaport, one of the largest maritime museums in the USA. Since then he has presented Shake These Bones folk music and dance programs as an artist-in-residence in schools across the USA, taught at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and performed as a singer, dance leader, and dance musician in the USA, England, France, Poland, and the Netherlands.

Bob is a graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and earned his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. Bob is presently researching sea shanties and sailors’ songs as part of an international team preparing a critical edition of the James Madison Carpenter folklore collection. This work has been funded by the British Academy and the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA) with the cooperation of the Library of Congress (USA), American Folklore Society and the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen.

Bob’s Publications include articles and classroom materials published in the Folk Song Journal, ISMIR 2005 and by World Music Press. In addition, he has three CDs for The Old and New Tradition label to his credit as well as guest appearances on another dozen recordings in the USA, France and England.