Aggie Boys Choir

The Aggie Boys Choir 

The Aggie Boys Choir are a bunch of young upstarts from all across Cornwall with a fondness of the sea and all things folky

They have cut their teeth on the stages of Falmouth sea shanty festival, played to 20,000 people at the Lorient interceltique festival and graced the streets and pubs of Ireland with their outlandish banter and authentic original songs. 

Multi award winning, numerous pint drinking and utterly winging it the Aggie boys choir will be sure to make you laugh, cry and leave you demanding an Encore!

Aggie Boys Choir is a loosely formed, rag tag bunch of young upstarts from all over Cornwall. All songs are 100% original and written by the creative crux and de facto leader of the group, Mr. Samuel Stephens.

Winners of the highly successful and well attended ‘Kan Rag Kernow’ – Song for Cornwall and represented Kernow in the Pan Celtic Song Contest in Doire/Derry, Eire on 22nd to 27th April, 2014

‘The Aggie Boys Choir’ sang a beautiful new song in Kernewek: ‘Meur ras, Kernow’. Sung in Cornish with translations carefully checked by former Grand Bard, Rod Lyon. Meur ras, Kernow is almost a prayer giving thanks for the land, home and bounty of Cornwall.

Falmouth Festival Notes 2024:

“The Aggie Boys Choir are your go to metamodern shanty ensemble, mixing traditional nautical folk with poets, instrumentals and a benign attempt at comedy, the group are like none you shall see in Falmouth this year. The band has had many incarnations and were once described as a “Swiss army choir”. They have performed at Celtic festivals in Ireland and Brittany, turned their hand to a bit of theatre, managed a TED Talk and featured on Channel 5’s Cornwall: A Year By The Sea.

Formed ‘neath the low beams of a Goonbell cottage, St. Agnes’ unique architecture was key in shaping the resonating tones of the choir. Originally meeting with no intention on public performance a bagus* was bonded, with none bothering to enquire whether ’twas a sensible act or no. Sam Stephens, who writes the majority of the songs, was inspired to tread this new path after one too many pints at Perranporth south over a decade ago. Within 12 months the Aggie Boys Choir were thrust into the limelight with test debut cover, Row Row Your Boat.

Sam’s lyrics pay witty homage to the working class legacy of the region, whilst gently mocking outsiders’ interpretation of what is perhaps perceived as twee Celtic culture. Indeed pasties and jam, mine-stack and harbour, and of course the order of the cream, well it may well seem a postcard provincial novelty reduced to call and response to you and me, but for the choir, the line between humour and heritage is as clear as muzzle on the moor. If you asked them to explain their songs you may as well hobble away, brain frazzled, wishing you hadn’t tread that particular cobbled path in the first instance. Forgive them for they know not what they shanty.

*Kernewic for group of friends.

The Aggie Boys Choir has a video page on Vimeo.