The traditional song Shenandoah is a shanty, a work song with chorus sung by sailors. Shenandoah is a typical "windless and capstan" shanty. Such pieces were sung during lengthy tasks like weighing anchor or docking and winding the line around the large capstan. These shanties did not usually employ the "call and response" pattern found in more rigorous examples, but involved all the sailors throughout. They are slow-paced and often have nostalgic lyrics, because the sailors were either preparing to go home or were docking someplace far from home.

The name "Shenandoah" is derived from that of an Indian tribe, the Senedos, of Shawnee-Algonquian extraction. They lived just north of present-day New Market in the bottomland lying between Smith Creek and the North Fork of the Shenandoah River in Virginia—the area today known as Meems Bottom. Roughly translated, the word "Shenandoah" means "daughter of the stars," referring to an old Senedos legend.

The melody of Shenandoah is one of the most memorable in Western folk music. It traces a broad arch over the four-line verse, hitting several high points along the way and moving to the dominant for the third line, which is a variation of the first. The repeated notes that set the word "Shenandoah" at the very beginning are mirrored in the repeated notes setting "across the wide [Missouri]" at the end of each verse. The appeal of the melody is clear in the hundreds of arrangements it has endured.

Perhaps most intriguing are the lyrics, which differ from source to source. In all cases, however, the pattern of repetition is the same: the first and third lines change from verse to verse, while the second ("Away, you rolling river" or a slight variation of this) and the fourth ("Away, I'm bound away, 'cross the wide Missouri" or a variation) return each time. In one version, a white trader offers money to "chief" for his "Indian daughter." The chief tells the trader to get lost. Later, a "Yankee skipper" shows up, gets the chief drunk and steals the daughter. In the last verse, the daughter yearns for the Shenandoah valley. Most other versions have been trimmed and rearranged to make Shenandoah a nostalgic song about a sailor missing the Shenandoah River and valley.

© John Palmer, Rovi