The story
Mystic Seaport Museum Sea Music Festival in Mystic
Mystic Seaport Museum's Sea Music Festival is an annual multi-day gathering held each June on the museum's working waterfront campus, bringing chantey singers, folk musicians, and maritime scholars together to perform music of the sea. Concerts, workshops, and hands-on chantey demonstrations take place aboard historic vessels and on outdoor stages, alongside the Music of the Sea Symposium, co-presented with Williams College's Williams-Mystic maritime studies program.
When Mystic Seaport Museum first gathered musicians to sing sea chanteys on its historic waterfront, the idea was modest: revive work songs that had largely died out with the age of sail and let visitors hear them where they belonged, aboard real square-riggers and whaling ships rather than in a concert hall.