Bright sunshine, warm sea breezes, white sandy beaches and sparkling blue ocean water makes for an almost perfect weekend. Toss in dozens of the hottest musical acts on the planet, and in addition stage it all to benefit a worthy enviromental cause and you have a weekend that’s hard to beat.
On April 15-17 (Friday thru Sunday), the fourth annual Rock the Ocean’s Tortuga Music Festival will take place at idyllic Fort Lauderdale Beach Park in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. For this year’s event, an extra day has been added to the festivities, giving music lovers even more top-notch entertainment.
Begun in 2013, the Tortuga Music Festival was founded by the non-profit Rock the Ocean’s Foundation and Huka Entertainment to raise awareness on one of the Earth’s most serious and pressing environmental issues, the preservation of the planet’s oceans. In addition to raising awareness regarding this increasing problem, the event aims to both educate and inform, as well as seeking to raise funding for scientific research, and most importantly, utilize the research findings to discover solutions that will solve the problems for both present and future generations. To this end, a generous portion of the proceeds from the event is donated directly to research and environmental organizations devoted to the issue, with more than a quarter of a million dollars already raised.
Covering nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, we’ve long taken our waters for granted, but decades of research have proven that our neglect has come with a potentially devastating cost, and positive action is not only recommended, but the action needs to be undergone with both haste and 100% resolve before it’s too late. Our oceans are far from being a renewable resource, and education is the first step in addressing the conservation of this precious natural resource.
One of the highlights of the Tortuga Music Festival is the Conservation Village, an area at the event dedicated to fostering awareness of this all important issue, featuring an array of exhibits, interactive demonstrations and games and various other activities designed to make marine conservation “real.” The Village is also devoted to demonstrating how the issue affects everyone, and more importantly, the steps that each individual can put into everyday action to save our oceans.
Now to the music. With multi-staging, the Tortuga Music Festival makes certain that every attendee is never far from live music, and with top-tier acts from the country, folk, rock and roots genres, virtually every musical preference is available. The headlining acts for the 2016 Festival include such performers as Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Sam Hunt, Tim McGraw, Elle King, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Muddy Magnolias, Thomas Rhett, Billy Currington and many, many more.
In just four years, Rock the Ocean’s Tortuga Music Festival has become a “must-see” event, and its association with a “good cause” makes it a worthy humanitarian event as well.
Credit Photo(s): Tortuga Music Festival 2015 by Marc Serota & Andrew Nathanson