Somewhere in the Caribbean between Mexico and Grand Cayman, folk and country stars Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin sing backup vocals for singer and guitarist Buddy Miller.

I'm 25 feet away, curled up on a sun-kissed lounge chair on the rum-punched pool deck of a huge cruise ship. I can't believe my eyes -- or my ears. But there they are, singing and swaying with the rolling ship. Me? I'm living a music lover's fantasy.

This cruise -- dubbed ''Cayamo: A Journey Through Song'' by its promoters -- lured nearly 2,000 passengers to drop at least $849 a piece, double occupancy, to spend seven days on board the Carnival Victory to hear nearly nonstop performances from a eclectic mix of musicians. This February cruise featured Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Edwin McCain, Brandi Carlile, Shawn Mullins, Earl Klugh and a half-dozen other bands in addition to Harris, Griffin, Colvin and Miller.

Missed the boat? Not to worry; there are plenty of other tune cruises on the horizon -- part of the ever-growing trend of theme cruises aimed a luring an audience with a particular passion.

If you like sports, you can cruise race car drivers or baseball greats or golf legends or football stars. Want to cruise naked? There's a naturist cruise. There are cruises for aficionados of archery, wine, knitting, ballroom dancing, film, chocolate, astronomy. Most are arranged by independent promoters, who charter the cruise ship or a portion of it for the sailing.

NAME THAT TUNE

And if you love music -- drumroll! -- you can choose from symphony to opera to blues, jazz, rock, country and pop. There's even the Elvis Cruise, aptly held on a Carnival ship called the Fantasy.

''Theme cruises have been around forever,'' said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of the website Cruisecritic.com. ``But there's been a huge renaissance in the last two to three years. And music cruises are the hottest thing going.''

From Miami and Fort Lauderdale, at least 10 music cruises are slated for the next year. One music cruise promoter booked 14,000 passengers on five cruises out of the Port of Miami earlier this year. Look to other ports -- New York and Los Angeles and others -- and the count grows.

Carnival is one of several lines that has leased ships for theme sails, and no wonder. The groups that run theme cruises bring new customers to cruising, and when it to comes to arranging the program, they do the heavy lifting, says Cherie Weinstein, Carnival's vice president for group sales and administration.

''These cruises are not marketed to the existing Carnival customer database,'' she said. The promoters ''take over the ship, they market it, create the theme, the programming and the pricing,'' Weinstein said.

''I heard company executives say as many as 50 percent of music cruise passengers are first-timers,'' Spencer Brown said.

And the new customers aren't drawn by such cruise staples as the round-the-clock dining, gambling, shore excursions or wacky poolside games. It's the immersion in something they love that drives them on board.

PLAYING OUR SONG

We certainly fit that description. We signed on for the music, not the cruise line or the ship or the stops or the excursions. For us, the meals and stopovers in Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios were mere intermissions in a spectacular music fest.

Our cruise featured more than a dozen acts. There were six who were considered headliners -- Lovett, Harris, Hiatt, Colvin, Carlile and Griffin -- and we had a reserved seat in the Victory's main concert hall to see each of them once. We also were able to choose to see one of the headliners in a smaller venue for a special ticketed show.

The other featured acts -- singer songwriters like Miller, Edwin McCain, Shawn Mullins, Earl Klugh, David Ryan Harris, Ari Hest, Holly Williams and bands such as The Duhks and Gaelic Storm -- played general admission shows in a variety of venues around the ship that ranged in size from the pool deck to small bars.

It made for a remarkably intimate experience. We saw Lyle Lovett in a lounge that held about 300 people. We chatted in the cafeteria lunch line with singer-songwriter John Hiatt and his wife, watched Shawn Colvin do battle (and not too successfully) at the blackjack tables and critiqued the quality of the soft-serve ice cream with singer Brandi Carlile.

''It's a kind of access you don't otherwise get,'' said Spencer Brown. ``People get to get up close and personal.''

The musicians like it, too, said Andrew Levine, a former band manager who now runs Sixthman Productions, the company that puts together the Cayamo cruise and several other music voyages each year.

''The selling point for the artist is they get to be on a ship with a collection of people who are really passionate about them and their music,'' Levine said. ``And they also get to be on a ship for six days with their peers. That's fun for them, and we take good care of them.''

There was plenty of evidence of that. When Buddy Miller played his pool-deck concert, Harris, Colvin and Griffin joined him on stage for half the show. And Brandi Carlile, a Seattle-based rising star, stood next to me and my wife to enjoy the show.

Carlile traveled with her mom. So did Emmylou Harris.

During one of her shows, Harris announced: ``We love the boat!''

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