‘The most atypical experience of my life’: The experience of popular music festivals on cruise ships

Abstract

This article considers the growing phenomenon of music festivals on cruise ships. These commercial events, partnerships between event companies and shipping lines, celebrate a particular genre of music and occur aboard a cruise ship. The views of 138 festivalgoers primarily concentrated within six festivals were considered. According to these sources, the festival experience of these events is centred on three factors: live performances, interaction with fellow festivalgoers and star musicians (collectively referred to as ‘ship fam’), and interaction with the constructed space of the cruise ship. Cruise ship music festivals are a different type of music festival, still occurring within festival space, but within the mobile experiential cocoon of a cruise ship.

Keywords

cruise music festival sonic tourism experience

Introduction

Under the stars a crowd is watching the performance – the loud and excessive performance – of one of their music idols. Stage lights blaze and gobo wheels spin. Everyone is in motion. Sweat sheens in the light as the dancers react viscerally to the music. The smell of humans in close proximity permeates the dance area. Some have had too much drink, but no one seems to care. Near the stage is a group of people dressed bizarrely – as pieces of fruit, pigs, jockeys astride a horse, or anything really. Just a few feet away a bass player from another famous band is rocking away with the crowd. One of the fans talks to, or rather shouts at, the group he is part of – dancing together, arms around each other in the manner of old friends – except they have just met the day before. He tells them that he met this particular band in the corridor this afternoon and talked about their music.¹

However, unlike the typical rock festival, the setting is salubrious, and the accommodation but a short stroll away. Replacing the rural or urban environment of other festivals are balconies that overlook the ocean, attentive staff, and the facilities of a luxury resort. Instead of being whisked in and whisked out, bands stay and hang with the fans, having dinner or drinks like any other festivalgoer. There is no local region to tout its pleasures; no place at all really, unless it is ‘in the main theatre’ or ‘on boat deck’. It is, as one fan put it, ‘the most atypical experience of my life’. Welcome to the world of cruise ship music festivals.

Music festivals on cruise ships are an increasingly significant cultural tourism experience. They are experiential celebrations of a particular cultural concept or physical geography, tributes to a specific genre of music often associated with a specific geographical place. However, these festivals occur within the mobile experiential environment of a cruise ship. Both experiential models – festivals and cruise ship – impact upon the design and experience of these events.

The experience and design of these festivals constructs a visceral and hedonistic experience which keeps festivalgoers returning year after year to the same or to similarly themed festivals. Three concepts are particularly important to the success of these events. Festivalgoers are passionate about the genre of music being celebrated, be it electronic dance music (EDM), metal, alternative rock, or others, and respond to the performative and cultural signifiers of the genre. Concert experiences and the opportunity to interact with artists are key to the cruise festival experience. Often this is the aspect that attracts attendees in the first place, and the people they meet, the ‘ship fam’ keeps them returning. Participants report staying in touch, occasionally meeting for concerts between festivals if possible, and generally experiencing a warm and unusually intimate experience with fellow cruise passengers during the festival. The attendees of this shared, neo-tribal experience, who describe themselves as ‘ship fam’, draw close within the hedonistic and intense festival experience. The cruise ship environment is described by an informant as the ‘perfect place to hold a festival’ due to smaller crowds, more luxurious facilities, and the physical and social encapsulation of the festival experience. It combines the best attributes of land-based festivals while significantly ameliorating their worst. These three concepts combine to make cruise ship music festivals an unusual and engaging experience of increasing significance on the world festival circuit.

Experience and festivals

This article considers music festivals on cruise ships as visceral, encapsulated and mobile cultural tourism experiences. As a fairly new festival event space, there is little direct sociological research into cruise music festivals and little on the culture of cruise shipping. This article draws on two areas: festival studies, and the consideration of experience. It builds on existing literature on festival studies, extending the knowledge of the different manners in which festivals occur. Consideration of the experience permits the consideration of intended structure and purpose of the cruise.

It is natural that an examination of tourist experiences be central to this study. In particular, Pine and Gilmore’s (2011) work on the experience is central to many tourism studies and particularly pertinent to music festivals. Pine and Gilmore’s model relies on two key aspects of experiences (Figure 1). First, experiences are sensory and emotive, engaging all the senses. Second, they are also performative, involving theatricality and performance relationships between hosts (actors) and guests (audience). In order to create a successful experience, a ‘sweet spot’ is sought involving active and passive participation as well as immersion in and absorption with the experience. Furthermore, to engage the ‘sweet spot’, an experience must contain entertaining, educational, aesthetic, and escapist elements. Pine and Gilmore’s model has been implemented in many tourism studies (Binkhorst, 2007; Bryman, 2004; Hausman, 2011; Hosany and Witham, 2009; Jakob, 2012; Mehmetoglu and Engen, 2011; Morgan, 2006, 2008; Packer and Ballantyne, 2010; Tung and Ritchie, 2011).

Figure 1.

Pine and Gilmore’s ‘Experience Economy’ model.

Pine and Gilmore’s work has impacted other tourism studies. Key among festival experience models are Packer and Ballatine’s (2010) ‘facets of the music festival experience’ and Morgan’s (2006, 2008) ‘prism of festival experience’. Scholarship into the experience of festivals has achieved some recent traction (Begg, 2011; Calvo-Soraluze and Del Valle, 2014; Ferdinand and Williams, 2013; McClinchey and Carmichael, 2010; Morgan, 2008; Quinn and Wilks, 2013; Wilks, 2011).

Festivals are often investigated in conflicting manners (Getz, 2010). Falassi (1987) described festivals in anthropological terms as ‘a sacred or profane time of celebration, marked by special observances’ (p. 2); however, to Pieper (1965), only religious celebrations are festivals. Arcodia and Robb (2000: 157) note that festivals are public, celebratory, and embedded in community. They are also often strongly connected with and invested in place (De Bres and Davis, 2001; Derrett, 2003; Lau and Li, 2015; McClinchey and Carmichael, 2010; Quinn, 2003) to the extent of ‘eventrification’ of geographical place (Jakob, 2012). At other times, place is not relevant to festivals; such festivals have been described as ‘postmodern festivals’ or ‘post-festivals’ (MacLeod, 2006). Relph’s (1976) concept of ‘placelessness’ and Augé’s (1992) non-lieux are relevant models for festivals in which place is less relevant than engaging with the experience. These divergent views, and the widely varying range of festivals, mean that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ festival.

While cruise studies has attracted some attention, much of this has been within the realm of the operational aspects of cruise tourism considering such matters as management, labour, port operations, and so forth (Papathanassis and Beckmann, 2011). Cruise ships have been considered as tourism models within tourism studies. However, outside of my own work and that of Kulhanek (2012), relatively little research has been undertaken on cultural aspects of cruise ships.

Research into music festivals aboard cruise ships is at a nascent stage. Henderson (2009) considered Cayamo, a roots-music cruise festival, as an example of marketing but other analysis of these experiential tourist events belongs firmly in the realm of popular publication. Nevertheless, aspects that impinge upon cruise festivals have strong traditions of scholarship.

Sample and method

This study is the result of a grounded theory research project which considers fan experience of cruise ship festivals. The data are drawn from 129 open-ended survey responses from festivalgoers, combined with interviews of nine key informants conducted in early 2015. Adding additional background data, the author worked on cruise ships as a pianist and experienced music festivals on cruise ships, albeit from the viewpoint of a staff member whose services were not required for the duration of the cruise.

Finding the sample was a two stage process. Initially, key informants were identified, some from social media, others contacting me after reading media reports on the research. These key informants were interviewed, and then obligingly posted about the research on the closed social media pages. In this second stage, members of the ‘ship fam’ were encouraged to give their views either by an online survey or through personal interview.

The respondents in this research were typical of cruise festivalgoers and came from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities. One noted that festivalgoers were

demographically 95 percent Anglo/white, average age is probably between 30 and 45, about half/half females/males, there were actually maps showing how many people were from what state, country, and then how many previous Rock Boats they had been on versus ‘virgins’.²

Another noted that they were

music lovers of all kinds. There were several different styles of bands on board, so a wide audience with one thing in common, a love for live music. No real age or gender stuck out though.

Festivalgoers were of various nationalities. One respondent from 70,000 Tons of Metal reported that

festivalgoers come from all over. I think that is going to change if the American dollar stays as strong as it does. […] I believe Germany actually represented the most people onboard followed by the USA. I think Canada was third or fourth and I think if I remember correctly, Australia was the sixth most. So I don’t know what the number was this year. On previous years out of the 2,000 cruise passengers there’s been between 150 to 200 Aussies onboard.

There were some common trends among respondents. Cruise passengers were typically employed for wages (75%) or self-employed (11%); understandable, considering the costs involved in attending a festival. Just under half (49%) were single and 36 percent were married. Most (70%) had some college education, the most common being a bachelor’s degree (31%) or master’s degree (25%). The overall sample covered a wide age range, the median being 36–40, higher than would be expected at many music festivals. However, when the sample is divided into festivals, a more revealing age distribution arises: respondents from The Rock Boat festival had a median age of 36–40, and heavy metal respondents (70,000 Tons of Metal and Monsters of Rock) a median age of 31–35. The median age for EDM festivals (Holy Ship! and Mad Decent Boat Party) was much lower at 21–25. The sample was skewed towards female respondents (75%) though several respondents reported no gender imbalance among those attending.

Together, the sample reported on 19 different festivals, with the largest groups from The Rock Boat (58%), 70,000 Tons of Metal (23%), Ships and Dip (10%), Live Loud (6%), Rombello (6%) and Mad Decent Boat Party (5%). A total of 68 percent had attended more than 1 cruise festival, with the average for this group being five festival attendances. One respondent reported attending 14 festivals.

Cruise festivalgoers comprise elements of ‘casual leisure’ tourists and post-tourists. Elkington and Stebbins (2014) discuss a group within cultural tourism, ‘casual leisure’ (p. 4), as ‘immediately intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. It is fundamentally hedonic, pursued for its significant level of pure enjoyment or pleasure’ (p. 4). This describes festivalgoers reasonably accurately within the cultural tourism area, and yet festivalgoers engage within a post-tourism space, participating in games, pastiche, and other key tenets of post-tourism.

Music festivals on cruise ships

Modern cruise festivals combine the luxurious and encapsulated tourist experience of a cruise vacation with the hedonistic, neo-tribal experience of a music festival. They are typically devoted to a particular genre. For example, EDM on Holy Ship! and Mad Decent Boat Party, heavy metal on 70,000 Tons of Metal, and alternative rock on The Rock Boat. As well as the actual festival, the festival experience includes pre-parties and continues on social media after the event.

While festival cruises devoted to music have been a tourism product of the cruise industry for many years, rock cruises are a relatively new phenomenon. Coastal and river vessels have hosted musical performances since the 1860s, an entertainment model which continues to this day. The first abortive attempt to organise a cruise festival occurred as a result of Woodstock. One Richard Groff attempted to charter Greek Line’s SS Queen Anna Maria for a music cruise because while ‘he liked Woodstock, he didn’t like the mud’ (Drew, 1970). Groff’s cruise was to have included bands such as Catfish, Boffalongo, and Cherry Family performing three times a day ‘and whenever else they think it’s groovy’. However the cruise did not eventuate because Bermuda, the destination of the cruise, felt the cruise was ‘alien to the way in which Bermuda has been promoted over the years’. Furthermore, the Greek government (the flag country of the ship) had recently voiced disapproval of rock music (New York Times, 1970). Thus, it was left to other genres to partner music festivals to cruise ships.

Between 1974 and 1979, the Holland America cruise ship SS Rotterdam hosted a biannual jazz festival which would include a famous big band (such as those led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Buddy Rich or Ray Charles), a featured singer (such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan or Carmen McRae), and several smaller ensembles (including those of Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal and others). Feather (1983) asserts that the series was stopped ‘probably because of the growing popularity of cruises’; ‘it was no longer necessary to buy expensive names when these staterooms could be filled with passengers. The lure of jazz became expendable’. However, the cruises were only halted for a few years and by 1983, entrepreneurs Hank O’Neil and Shirley Sheir began a successful annual jazz festival onboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s SS Norway. A description of this festival sounds remarkably reminiscent of descriptions of modern ship festivals, though with a jazz bent:

The Norway carries three main jazz venues, and sometimes they’re all going at once. The Saga Theater has orchestra and balcony seating. In the more cozy club settings of the Checkers Cabaret and the Club Internationale, where people come and go as they please, the music is insouciant, swinging and close enough to touch. […] it’s like a high school reunion. Dizzy Gillespie, 71, is throwing a bear hug around tenor saxist [sic] Illinois Jacquet, 67. Buddy Tate, 73, who sat in Count Basic’s sax section in 1939, embraces pianist Tommy Flanagan, 58. Milt Hinton, 78, who left Chicago to join Cab Calloway in 1935, has saxophonist Benny Carter, 81, in stitches over something.

By 1991, there were also classical cruises touring the Mediterranean (Miller, 1991), but successful rock cruises would have to wait until the 2000s. Arguably the most successful, The Rock Boat started in 2001 as a Labor Day cruise on the MV Carnival Jubilee undertaken by alternative Floridian band Sister Hazel and 400 fans. It was so successful that the 2002 cruise had 18 acts, and the 2003 cruise 38. Sister Hazel launched a production company, Sixthman to run these festivals; however, the cancelling of the fifth The Rock Boat in 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina would have bankrupted Sixthman were it not for Carnival Cruise Lines refunding their charter fee and other unrecoverable expenses, and fans insisting their ticket costs be retained by the company. In 2007, the company expanded its offerings to 3 cruises, and by 2014 were offering 14 music festival cruises, including the fourth annual KISS Kruise, country-themed Mountain Song at Sea, the Mad Decent Boat Party (capitalising on the Mad Decent branding) and the 14th The Rock Boat. Today, other companies offer similar cruises. American-based music festival HARD has organised Holy Ship! since 2012. Swiss concert promoter Andy Piller has organised 5 heavy metal themed 70,000 Tons of Metal cruises, with the first in 2011.

Rock festivals on cruise ships are now a feature of the global festival circuit. They are offered in different parts of the world: many, of course, in the Caribbean, the spiritual home of the cruise industry, but also in Australia (Cruisin’ Country and Sea ‘n’ Beats), Asia (It’s The Ship) and Europe (Monsters of Rock). For a typical 3-day festival cruise, prices range from USD599 for a berth in a cabin of four, to USD1549 for a suite with balcony – reasonable, considering the inclusion of meals, not to mention multiple live performances. Cruises depart from traditional ports (such as Miami) as necessitated by the ship’s regular itineraries.

According to sampled respondents, the day-to-day routine of a festival shares common aspects. Performances begin at 10 a.m. and continue without a break until the early hours of the morning. There are typically multiple venues around the ship (including the main theatre and a large stage set up on the deck) and festivalgoers roam from stage to stage. There are also signing sessions when they can meet their favourite stars, although this may not be their only chance to interact with the band. One festivalgoer recounts,

sitting around in a hallway with members of Collective Soul, other bands and other fans singing oldies while someone played guitar. The chance to sit next to my favourite rock stars and sing songs was a dream come true.

Many festivalgoers consume large amounts of alcohol. As well as traditional cruise ship activities such as belly-flop competitions and collective dance competitions, there are theme nights where festivalgoers are encouraged to dress up in costume. The day’s final performances end a few hours before sunrise, and the last festivalgoers wend their way back to their cabins to crash. This description is fairly consistent across the sampled ship festivals.

Aboard a cruise festival, the destination is not the ship, nor the various ports visited; it is the festival itself (MacLeod, 2006; Saleh and Ryan, 1993), which is contained within the social and physical space of the ship. This encapsulated space has several functions (some in common with cruise ships in general): as the delineator of festival space, as a barrier to casual departure, as luxurious space, and as the container for an experience. A cruise ship has been likened to a cocoon (Vogel, 2004), a mobile tourist enclave (Weaver, 2005) and an extended ‘tourist bubble’ (Jaakson, 2004). All of these models consider the space of a cruise ship as separate from the places visited. In normal cruising mode, a ship and the cultural constructs within function as physical and social barriers which encapsulate and protect cruise tourists.

The number of cabins limits the residents of a cruise ship, often causing early sell-outs of festivals. However, this also creates an intimate festival experience, something festivalgoers report very positively. The ship also acts as a barrier to casual departure. In a land-based festival, bands can be brought in just before their performance and whisked away at the end, whereas on a cruise ship they are forced to interact or spend the cruise in their cabin. Respondents frequently recounted the advantages of the luxurious experience compared to land-based festivals, such as, ‘All the awesomeness of non-stop music, with none of the hassles of huge crowds, mud, port-a-potties, camping’, and

No worries about noise bothering the neighbours, no curfews, no worries about drinking since your cabin is so close, all of your friends and musician friends are close by, food is ready for you any time of the day or night to easily grab something on the run if there’s a show to get to.

The festival is also a container for an experience. Pine and Gilmore (2011) argue that experiential space needs to incorporate aesthetic, escapist, educational and entertainment elements; only then ‘does plain space become a distinctive space for staging an experience’ (p. 63). Certainly, the space of a cruise ship is themed to a particular aesthetic (both as a cruise ship, and as festival space). It is the very model of escapism,³ it is educational in that festivalgoers are learning about the genre and discovering new bands, and it is certainly entertaining.

On a festival cruise, most of the time is spent within the social container of the ship. According to one interviewee, an organiser of cruise music festivals, the itinerary of the festival is chosen for the accessibility of the home port rather than its itinerary. Indeed, many short festivals consist of a day at sea, and a visit to one of the many cruise line leased islands within the Caribbean. These islands are usually leased from one of the Caribbean island nations, and in the case of Disney’s ‘Castaway Cay’ (formerly Gorda Cay), ‘improved’ by dredging and grinding sand into the perfect representation of a ‘Caribbean Island’ (Antoni, 1999). Thus, every moment on these short cruises is spent in space controlled and operated by the cruise line.

One of the common comparisons made by respondents was the advantage of cruise festivals over land-based festivals. One respondent was particularly forthright:

Holy fucking shit! A cruise ship is the optimal environment for a music festival. First off, you’re safe: there’s a doctor on board and tons of staff that care about your well-being. If you’re feeling sick, you can go back to your cabin and rest. If you’re hungry, you can walk five minutes and grab free food. If you’re dehydrated, you go to a water station and grab a glass of water. Outdoor festivals have none of those things, and if they have those things, they’re expensive, inconvenient, or difficult to access. A cruise ship is so, so insanely safe. A cruise ship is also great for noise concerns. No complaints from local residents or police, because you’re on an ocean. A cruise ship festival is also all-inclusive. You never have to worry about getting back to your hotel, or finding food, or making public transportation before the show ends. Everything exists on the cruise ship, and it’s incredibly peaceful.

The advantages cited by respondents revolved around the cruise space: dedicated staff, safety, convenience, no noise concerns, all-inclusive cost, access to hotel rooms and food. Other respondents also noted the size of the festival – limited as it is by the size of the cruise ship – led to a closer relationship between the festivalgoers and musicians.

Live musical performances

Movement as a response to music is a natural human response. It occurs through a process of sensory–motor coupling between the microtiming deviations between the drums and the bass (Burke et al., 2013; Fruhauf et al., 2013) and the need to move to that music (Janata et al., 2012; Witek et al., 2014). It is the tourist’s response to the aural stimuli of the cruise that provides much of the sensory and visceral reaction of music on cruise ships, the pumping sub-bass on an EDM cruise, or the wall of noise that sets an entire audience head banging on a metal cruise. It is this sensuous, aural experience to which festivalgoers respond. While there are excellent writings on tourism and music (Atkinson, 1997; Cashman and Hayward, 2013; Connell and Gibson, 2004; Gibson and Connell, 2005, 2011; Hayward, 2001; Johnson, 2002; Saldanha, 2002) they are yet to develop the broader implications of the tourist ear. Indeed, the concept has received little academic attention.

Festival attendees uniformly regard the music as being significant in their choice of festival. Asked about the best part of the festival, respondents reported, ‘the pure joy of being around such talented musicians’, ‘getting to see my favourite bands, plus discovering new bands’, ‘The music of course! And seeing bands I may have never seen, finding new favourites’, and ‘Seeing my favourite bands, getting to know new-to-me bands. Every year I fall in love with some new groups I’d never know of otherwise’. This centrality is natural, and the drawcard for festivalgoers.

As with most music festivals, cruise festivals construct an experiential and performative capsule within which musicians create commodified musical performances for audiences to consume. Many elements are at play, including music, decor, costumes, lighting and others, yet there are aspects available within a cruise festival which are unavailable in other festival scenarios. Some involve the development of relationships between fans and musicians that would not occur unless both were contained aboard a ship for the duration of the festival. Others involve the implementation of the cruise experience, such as the luxury of watching a favourite band from the side of the stage, or even a hot tub, as reported by one participant (see Figure 2). Concerts within cruise festivals are more participatory experiences than live performances in land-based festivals.

Figure 2.

Watching Cannibal Corpse from the hot tub on 70,000 Tons of Metal 2014 (image used by permission).

Ship Fam (interactions with fellow festivalgoers and star musicians)

Another important phenomenon consistently reported by respondents was the family-like intimacy within the group of festival participants. Many festivalgoers that met on the ship, or perhaps shared a cabin⁴ maintained contact between festivals by meeting for concerts (if possible), or through social media. One festivalgoer reported,

With the ship-based festivals, you are on the boat with all these people. You may not see them all, but they’re there and you can run into random people and know you’ll see them at some other point. I think there’s a stronger camaraderie with the ship-based festivals.

Fans are also likely to engage with star performers at a cruise festival, far more so than at a land-based festival. Sometimes this is even mandated in performer contracts. Musicians are also encapsulated in the festival experience, enclosed in a placeless space for the duration of the cruise rather than being whisked away at the end of their show; the band that fans saw onstage one night is lining up at the breakfast buffet the next morning. Aside from the formally sanctioned ‘signing sessions’ around the ship, respondents reported that the musicians aboard cruise festivals were unusually accessible. One attendee reported having dinner with Ed Robertson, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of Barenaked Ladies. Another guest recounted that

Wintersun’s first performance in the indoor arena […] brought me to tears, it was so technically brilliant. Here I was, the mother, crying in the pit. I got to tell Jari [Mäenpää, singer and guitarist] that too and he was touched. He took my hand and put it on his heart and said ‘That means so much to me. Thank you’.

Musicians regularly tweet their thanks to #shipfam at the end of festivals. Cruise ship festivals clearly promote an unusual level of intimacy between festivalgoers and musicians.

The camaraderie between festivalgoers, as well as festivalgoers and star musicians can be understood within Morgan’s concept of ‘social interaction’, which he also refers to as communitas. This term has overtones of equality within a community. Communitas is a core concept within the anthropology of ritual as pioneered by Victor Turner (1969). Turner (1974) also notes that travel as well as ritual also constructs communitas, a view shared by subsequent tourism scholars (Cohen, 1979; Duffy and Waitt, 2011; Franklin, 2003: 49–52; Wang, 1999; Yarnal and Kerstetter, 2005). Urry and Larsen (2011) note that a tourist, out of their usual social and spatial residency, experiences liminality,

where the individual finds him/herself in an ‘anti-structure … out of time and place’ – conventional social ties are suspended, an intensive bonding ‘communitas’ is experienced, and there is direct experience of the sacred or supernatural. (p. 27)

However, the social structures of music also generate communitas. In discussing music as a device for social ordering, DeNora (2000) notes that music can foster ‘a co-subjectivity where two or more individuals may come to exhibit similar modes of feeling and acting, constituted in relation to extra-personal parameters, such as those provided by musical materials’ (p. 149). Of particular relevance to cruise festivals is Connell and Gibson’s (2003) observation that

music tourism sub-cultures have emerged around the tours of particular artists, with groups of highly committed fans (even ‘groupies’), who follow performers around from concert to concert, even generating a sense of ‘communitas’ through shared experiences, fan clubs and traditions maintained on-tour. (p. 228)

In particular, rave culture – the music culture of both Holy Ship! and Mad Decent Boat Party – generates communitas (Bloustien and Peters, 2011; Gibson and Connell, 2005). This focus on the collective experience of cruise festivals can be also contextualised within Maffesoli’s (1988) concept of ‘neo-tribalism’. Maffesoli argues that as the social institutions of modernism have transformed into those of postmodernism, their ability to fuse large groups of people towards a common goal has been lost, replaced by small groups that experience collaborative bonded by common experience, emotions and aesthetics. He calls this phenomenon ‘neo-tribalism’. Certainly, festivalgoers share a common aesthetic desire for the music celebrated by the festival. Words and phrases used to describe the ‘ship fam’ are affectionate: music lovers, friendly, nice, broad demographic, family, international, partiers, like-minded, and there to have a good time.⁵

As the ‘festival experience’ has increased in importance within land-based music festivals, some authors have begun to question the centrality of music within a music festival (Bowen and Daniels, 2005). While the music is central to the experience of cruise festivals on cruise ships, and few festivalgoers would go on a cruise without the music, the group experience of the music is also equally important to festivalgoers. The close relationships between ‘ship fam’ is a key component of the experience. While the intimate atmosphere of the smaller festival experience aboard a cruise ship assists the neo-tribal sense of communitas, the inclusion of festivalgoers from all over the world and subsequent ‘inter-festival’ communication via social media also has an impact.

Engagement with cruise ship space

A cruise ship is a hyperreal and experiential tourist space specifically designed for post-tourism engagement (Cashman, 2013; Kulhanek, 2012; Williams, 2002: 195). It inhabits no specific human geography save the often nameless one of the ocean. Rather it comprises created spaces designed to fabricate the illusion of, and even improve upon permanence and reality. It is worth noting that these are core concepts of Eco’s (1987) hyperreality. Yet, as noted, music festivals are often a celebration of place (De Bres and Davis, 2001; Derrett, 2003; Lau and Li, 2015; McClinchey and Carmichael, 2010). As a cruise ship does not inhabit a place in a human geographic sense, neither can a cruise music festival. Nevertheless, respondents reported enjoying the engagement with the constructed space of the ship.

Furthermore, the actual festival space of many land-based rock festivals leaves much to be desired. The open elements of many festivals are unpredictable and can leave festivalgoers wet, muddy, hot, sunburned, or any other number of unpleasant conditions. The further infrastructural problems of providing safe accommodation, transport, food, drink and sanitary conditions may be overwhelming. The essential requirement of physical safety in a large crowd can be difficult to ensure, and issues with noise often necessitate a rural or isolated location. Finally, the technical issues of effective sound and lighting and the other expectations of live musical performance can be difficult. Moving the festival into the controlled environment of a cruise ship solves these problems. A cruise ship is designed to provide luxurious food, drink, accommodation and sanitary conditions, and there are many performance spaces with sophisticated technical facilities. An onboard security staff already exists. The festival space is accessible from a port, takes place in an area with no noise concerns (the open ocean), and returns to urban space at the end.

Respondents were generally very enthusiastic about the encapsulated and luxurious experiences of a cruise ship. In particular, they cited three areas of engagement: engagement with the encapsulated festival experience, with the luxury festival experience and with the ease of the festival experience. In a land-based festival, space is divided into open space (the space outside the event), semi-restricted space (where festivalgoers can go) and restricted space (where musicians can go). While some of these restrictions remain within cruise festivals – festivalgoers are not permitted backstage – the spatial edges are more blurred. However, the barriers between open space and festival space are ironclad by law and convenience.⁶

Several features of cruise festivals are consequently particularly valued by festivalgoers: musicians stay for the entire cruise and engage with the audience, the finite space of a cruise ship results in a smaller and more exclusive festival, and alternative venues are available in case of adverse weather conditions. The space of a cruise ship is luxurious, not a feature commonly associated with music festivals. Food is plentiful, well presented, and delicious. Attentive staff are on hand to ensure the steady flow of water, alcohol, clean rooms and linen. Such factors make the cruise more palatable to the demographic, which tends to be slightly older than the standard rock festival crowd. This is natural as cruise holidays are designed to be easy. One respondent noted that at a cruise festival

you don’t have to worry about where you are going to stay in relation to the festival grounds. You don’t have to worry about transportation to and from the festival. You don’t have to worry about finding something to eat or drink, as there are always options available.

With festivalgoers enjoying the cruise experience so much, it could be expected that they might also enjoy taking a regular cruise, however this is not the case. Only 21 percent of the sample said they were ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to attend a regular cruise, compared to 55 percent who were ‘not very likely’ or ‘not likely’. The most probable cause for these responses is that for many of these guests, attending a cruise festival forms part of their regular annual holiday. Because a cruise ship festival is such an engaging experience they are unlikely to waste valuable vacation time on a cruise that does not contain music. Furthermore, some respondents reported a perception of usual cruise tourists as ‘lame. They want to travel, but don’t want to engage with local culture, don’t want to take risks […] By contrast those on Mad Decent Boat Party were all similar age, similar interest, and open to experience’. Thus the homogeneity of festivalgoers – the ‘ship fam’, plays a part in holiday preference.

Implications

Cruise festivals are profitable and successful festival events. The fundamental sense of place that accompanies many music festivals is as pronounced within the placeless experience of a cruise ship; however, celebration of a genre of music and the musical experience of that celebration is retained. From the cruise side, the encapsulated, luxurious and experiential cruise product is retained, but instead of the attention of guests being focussed on the ship, it is directed towards the music and musicians. These festivals are increasing in number and in success – in 2015, EDM festival Holy Ship! added an extra sailing, which it is retaining in 2016. Sixthman was cited as the fastest growing travel company by INC Magazine in 2011. Cruising in Australia is on the rise with a new Sea ‘n’ Beats EDM festival announced. Moreover, festivals at sea are successful. Travel writer Gerrick Kennedy (2012) notes two lucrative models: a ‘host’ and a ‘festival’ model:

The host model (such as Kid Rock’s) offers no guarantee, with profits being split between Sixthman and the host, the artist taking the lion’s share. In addition, Sixthman gives the host funds to spend on supporting bands (Kid Rock was given about $US100,000 for his roster). On the festival model, such as the singer-songwriter-driven Cayamo cruise, they spend about $US100,000 a day on talent.

These festivals form experiences reminiscent of Pine and Gilmore’s (2011) paradigm, partly because of their physical location within the cruise ship, but also unto themselves. Experiences occur when a person ‘pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages – as in a theatrical play – to engage him in an inherently personal way’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011: 3). Cruise ships, noted examples of experiences (Atwal and Williams, 2009; Hosany and Witham, 2009; Huang and Hsu, 2010; Pine and Gilmore, 2011), engage regular guests within an encapsulated and constructed experience. So successfully do regular cruises do this that some guests do not leave the ship, preferring to remain onboard for the duration of the cruise rather than engage with the destinations.

However, while they may differ in their evaluations of the experience, cruise ship guests certainly engage with the key experiential dimensions of aesthetics, entertainment, education and escapism (Hosany and Witham, 2009). Festivalgoers similarly engage with these areas; Pine and Gilmore (1998) note that festivals ‘script distinctive experiences around enticing themes, as well as stage activities that captivate customers before, after, and while they shop’ (p. 101), and Sundbo (2004) has considered these from the point of view of a rock festival. Music festivals, as cruise ships, enclose tourists in an experiential capsule of festival space (within the gates) as opposed to open space (outside the gates). Cruise festivals combine these experiential models to great success.

Conclusion

Cruise ship festivals, like cruise ships, rely on two methods of filling their vessels. First, they need to get people onto the ship in the first place. However, the modern incarnations of these events have been happening for a decade-and-a-half now, and cruise festivals are booked out many months in advance. The second method is that they need to convince people to return. A festivalgoer on Mad Decent Boat Party noted,

it would play a part in the decision to go back. Even things like rather than going and lining up for beers, you know, people would come around and take your drink orders at the front of dance floor and just bring things to you constantly. And you had somewhere nice and warm and dark and quiet to go back to sleep. You could shower, which was a massive bonus after things like Splendour in the Grass.

Tynan and McKechnie (2008) refer to these periods within the overall experience as ‘pre-experience’ (comprising imagining, searching, planning and budgeting) and ‘post-experience’ (including nostalgia, fantasising and evangelising). It is these processes that attract ‘festival virgins’ (a term regularly used by respondents) and ensure the return of ‘ship fam’.

Cruise ships are becoming event places and the most visible of these events are music festivals. Similarly to cruise tourism, but to a greater degree, they focus the festival as the destination: the music, the social experience, and the touristic environment of the cruise. By removing the distraction of geographic place and supplanting it with a beach party on a fabricated island, or with the ship itself, these festivals become entirely commercial ventures. Rather than celebrating a community and its values and culture, they construct a temporary community from strangers – the ‘ship fam’ – and concentrate on constructing a memorable and financially profitable tourist experience.

Postlude

On 12 November 2015, as this article was being rewritten, a 24-year-old festivalgoer attending 2015 Mad Decent Boat Party, Kaylyn Rose Sommer, fell overboard from the stern of the MV Norwegian Pearl and is presumed dead. Sommer was a particularly prominent member of ‘madfam’, and had been married on the ship during the previous year’s festival. As Katie Bain (2015) reported,

it is not unusual for people to go missing from cruise ships […] roughly 200 people die onboard cruises each year. Overboard-related incidents are more rare, as the story notes that ‘it is almost impossible to fall from a cruise ship, it is usually passengers intent on suicide or as a result of alcohol-induced pranks’. Some people are pulled out of the water alive but most who go overboard disappear completely.

The cruise line and festival organisers are stating that this was a suicide, something relatively common on cruise ships (Cruise Ship Wave, 2015; Low, 2006) and near-impossible to prevent. The media have been in a frenzy of reportage. As noted by one of my respondents, the reaction of festivalgoers has been mixed:

between those who think suicide is selfish and those who recognise it as an outcome of mental illness, but also between original madfam and those who were first time on the boat. Original madfam were quite affected by the incident, possibly because Kay was such a big part of the event last year. There’s been quite a few people feeling that they had been ripped off (because they only got a $57 refund) but these seem to be the people for whom this is their first cruise. This has led to a divide between ‘OG madfam’ and the new madfam.

One of the key markers of cruise festivals has been their intimacy. Many, as demonstrated by this article, go year after year, and become friends with other festivalgoers, staying in touch via social media. With so much attention now being focussed on cruise ship festivals, it remains to be seen how this incident will affect future EDM festivals and cruise festivals in general.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

David Cashman is an associate professor of Creative Arts and the head of CQUniversity’s creative arts program in Cairns. His research interests include sonic tourism, and regional music scenes.

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