Music has a special ability to convey emotion that words alone may not. Considering most don’t experience the sea the same way Ian did over the course of his reporting, music may help people connect to these moving stories and issues more than they otherwise would. The abuses, injustices and problems highlighted in this book need to be given higher visibility. The way for that to start is by informing the world on what’s happening. 

 

Some of the situations and conditions illustrated in the book are unlike anything I’ve ever heard of. I wrote and structured my songs after specific themes and moments in The Outlaw Ocean — making melodic and harmonic choices in my compositions that I felt best conveyed the emotions I thought those in the book might have felt. The chapter “Armed and Dangerous” especially jarred me. It’s difficult to articulate how it made me feel, but it was a story that deeply affected me and inspired the piece, “Witnessing Murder.” Overall I sought to capture the stress, horror, confusion and sorrow experienced by abused crewmen, who have been trafficking from their homelands and who were forced to work on fishing boats.

Philip G Anderson