For over forty years the Georgia Sea Islands Festival on St. Simons Island, Georgia has celebrated the African American musical traditions, crafts, and food of the coastal barrier islands. There will be cuisine, arts & crafts, demonstrations, vendors and live enertainment. The Georgia Sea Islands Festival attract visitors from around the nation.

Each year the highlight of the festival are the musicians – young, old, and some “with an old heart” — who perform traditional spirituals, work songs, and plays handed down by their ancestors. The festival on St. Simons Island was first organized in 1977 by members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Mable Hillery and Bessie Jones, and carried on today by Frankie Quimby and the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition.

The Georgia Sea Islands Festival was canceled for 2023