Opening Reflections from a Maritime Musicologist

Where it all begins and ends - the sea as archive, stage and witness.

Starting a blog always feels a little like setting out to sea: you’ve packed the essentials, plotted a rough course, and still there’s a sense of uncertainty about what’s ahead. But that’s part of the appeal. This space isn’t meant to be a polished journal of conclusions, but rather a logbook of thoughts, encounters and moments along the way - some fleeting, some resonant.

I’ve started this blog to create room for the kinds of things that don’t always find their way into formal publications. A conversation from a conference coffee break. A song that catches me off guard in the archive. A moment of friction between what we think we know about maritime music and what a sailor’s voice or a scrap of notation might suggest. These fragments matter, and I want to make space for them here.

Over the coming months, I’ll be writing about some of the events I’ve been attending - sharing reflections on papers that stayed with me, performances that challenged my assumptions and exhibitions that gave me new things to think with. I’ll also be posting about parts of my research that I’m particularly excited about or that seem to raise more questions than answers. And, where relevant, I’ll highlight upcoming events that might interest others working in or adjacent to maritime sound worlds.

For now, I’ll end with a small reflection on the nature of maritime music. Recently, I've been thinking about sea songs as representative of 'tidal memory' - shifting, pulled by context and never quite fixed. I keep returning to that image. It captures something of the challenge (and the beauty) of this work: listening carefully to what remains, while being honest about what’s been lost to time, tide and silence.

More soon.

Dr. Mollie Carlyle