Interview Overviews

 

In researching this topic, I interviewed four festival enthusiasts whose testimonies are referenced throughout the site. Although they are four demographically similar men who represent just a small handful of unique experiences, their opinions show threads in festival culture and hypotheses about its future.

1: Tony - Works in the music industry, has worked at and attended numerous camping festivals

2: Josh - Began developing a camping festival and has attended numerous

3: Alex - Attendee of many festivals and spent a summer jumping to various East Coast festivals

4: Grant - Festival enthusiast and attendee of many

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Interview One: Tony

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I connected with Tony through Necto Nightclub, a venue in Ann Arbor that I work with through a student org. In addition to working in marketing for Necto, Tony runs his own event company called Southpaw Events, which hosts Underground Yoga sessions around the metro-Detroit area. He has also worked for several festivals, including Movement Festival in Detroit, UpNorth Festival in Copemish, MI, and Envision Festival in Costa Rica. Tony first fell in love with festivals as an attendee of Movement Festival in 2010. A few years later, he worked at Movement, curating a street team and working as an assistant in Artist Relations (AR), an area in which he now focuses.

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Tony comments on the differences between working at festivals versus events like a singular concert, describing the differences in atmosphere as, “night and day:” “I mean my heart is with festivals because it’s this living breathing kind of organism that is in it of itself intangible…When you hear this consensus of thousands of people that say it’s just magical. Indescribable… People say that of events, and you get that at events, but not that kind of familial community aspect that comes with this long duration of a festival.”

 

Tony draws a distinction, however, between the experiences of attendees and the “chaos” experienced by festival organizers. He explains that management’s job is to create an experience that is a, “[suspension of] reality, because that’s what the attendees are looking for.” However, festival management has a responsibility to, “…be that broker between the reality and keeping everybody else in the suspended reality.” Organizers must navigate controversies like drug use at festivals, and are generally hesitant to endorse organizations that provide materials like drug testing kits, because in doing that, “You’re implicitly saying that it’s okay to have that at our festival.” However, organizers still establish on-site medics and security whose job is to ensure peoples’ safety in all capacities.

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Elaborating on the central theme of escapism, he suggests that it is one of festivals’ main draws: “…what’s driving these festivals is this escape from what’s going on around us in reality…being able to set [reality] off to the side and say, ‘Yeah that’s still there, but that’s not what this is about, and we’re going to take this time to just have a time or a place that’s not part of this real world we have to run back to in a couple of days.'"

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Connecting festival culture to the resurgence of vinyl sales, he continues: “People are sick of the ethereal cloud,” and festivals allow a break from digital consumption and mindless routine. However, he acknowledges that festivals also provide a welcome interruption from many other exhausting aspects of the day-to-day, from the polarizing political environment to sitting in traffic: “It’s not just escapism [in relation to] materials. It’s not just escapism from politics. It’s not just escapism from your life which might be a daily grind as it is for most people. You could make a case for escapism on multiple levels.”

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In speaking about the different forms of expression through fashion and performance that people demonstrate at festivals, he suggests: “It’s this hunger to be different, but to be accepted and in this community that wants to have you.” Further, he elaborates on the acceptance and positive energy circulated at festivals, recalling a time when he let a man into a festival with a broken wristband. The man came back after the festival’s end to emphasize how grateful he was and recount the amazing experience he had to Tony: “Because it’s this little microcosm of a community, you can almost see how the positive energy you’re [putting forth] is being recycled and reused, building that even more.”

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Tony postulates about the future of camping festivals, predicting a rise of artist-curated stages and festivals in paradise-type environments like cruise ships. However, he acknowledges that as festivals grow in popularity and lineups bring in internationally-renowned artists, they increasingly draw people who do not necessarily identify with the festival subculture as it currently exists. Smaller festivals like UpNorth retain a stronger connection to this subculture, but Electric Forest, for example, has grown to a point where it is in the mainstream.

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Interview Two: Josh

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Josh is a 23 year old U of M alum who works in marketing in San Francisco. He has been to 4 different camping festivals in his lifetime, some of which he’s attended multiple times. He has also been to several other daytime festivals, though he prefers those with the camping element. He first became interested in camping festivals not only because he loves the outdoors, but also because he likes electronic music. However, seeing jam bands over the years, particularly The String Cheese Incident, has brought him to love jam band music, which he calls “quality live music” and “relaxing.”

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In speaking about what the camping experience brings to festivals, he comments on the total immersion and distance from pressures of society: “You can kind of get lost for days at a time without feeling pressure to take a shower or go back where you have internet connection and you can just be on your computer and stuff like that. When you’re at camping festivals and your phone dies on day 1, yeah maybe you can charge up your crap, but most of the time it’s just going to be dead for a few days, and that’s okay.”

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Some of Josh’s favorite experiences at camping festivals were the small interactions with fellow attendees. He anecdotally recalls interacting with someone who was wearing a body sticker: “He just walked up to me and goes ‘you seem like you need this’ and handed me a body sticker…It fell off in like an hour but it was a very nice gesture.” Josh likes to reciprocate this kindness at festivals, exchanging small items like keychains with other people.

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In college, Josh and a friend began to plan a music festival of their own. They planned to name it, “The Roots Festival,” or, “Michigan Roots,” and it was to focus on the element of community. In addition to showcasing local artists, the festival would offer affordable ticket prices, and buying a ticket would require an invite from somebody who already had one. This would create a festival community in which every person was connected by a few degrees of separation. Josh and his team’s vision for the layout of the campgrounds was also community focused, with different camping areas called “family trees” that would have central bonfires. In the end, busy schedules and difficulties in acquiring funding unfortunately inhibited The Roots Festival from coming to fruition.

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When asked about recent changes in festival culture, Josh spoke about, “aesthetics replacing substance over time.” He expands on the idea that when many people think about places like Coachella or Burning Man, they picture festival fashion rather than the festival experience. In addition to overexposure, he thinks that festival monetization has reduced the ability of many festivals to, “create an authentic atmosphere.” He has witnessed changes in camping festival environments as the passion engrained in their original missions is overpowered by corporate sponsorships.

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Further, although he thinks camping festivals could be a venue for political unity, he does not believe it is the role of festival management to influence peoples’ views: “…it’s not rly the place of the organizers to make political statements, but more to provide an environment where it’s totally welcome and people of all leanings can come together over shared interest(s) and engage in that discourse in a positive manner if they want to (or probably will regardless through exposure).” Regardless, he acknowledges that political statements may be a slippery slope for festivals, as they must consider implications for corporate sponsorship.

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Lamenting the profit-driven nature and superficiality of many of today’s festivals, Josh is interested in exploring Rainbow Gatherings, during which groups of people assemble in remote forest areas for days to weeks at a time, and, “enact a supposedly shared ideology of peace, harmony, freedom, and respect” (wiki).

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Interview Three: Alex

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Alex is a 22 year old finishing his senior year as a Chemical Engineering major at U of M. He has attended dozens of camping festivals since his first experience at Electric Forest when he was 17.

Alex and I began our conversation discussing the narrow segment of jam band and electronic live-music culture in the United States. In speaking about its specificity to the United States and North America, he postulates that this music culture contrasts more greatly with the, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality of the United States than that of other countries. It’s possible that this contributes to the jam band/EDM live-music culture in this part of the world, which is fueled by reciprocal acts of giving and kindness.

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In speaking about his relationship to music, Alex reflects that, “The music influences how you feel when you’re not listening to it.” As someone who identifies as a die-hard Cheesehead, Alex feels connected to other people who listen to the same music: “I feel like very few not-positive people listen to String Cheese.” Seeing quality live music and connecting with like-minded, positive people are two main reasons why Alex loves festival culture. Describing the summer where he traveled to several festivals on the East Coast of the US, he says, “I got to see amazing music, I got to meet amazing people, and I got to be a part of something. I was selling all of my friends’ art, so I was supporting my friends, and that was always a great feeling for me.”

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Supporting his friends this way is one example of the giving nature of festival culture, which also manifests in fashion trends. Alex describes the common practice of exchanging hat pins: “Being gifted things…is kind of one of the bigger driving things behind what people wear and how they wear it… The first 5 people that I can think of that wear hats with pins specifically only put pins on the hat that they’re gifted. They don’t put any that they would buy.”

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Alex acknowledges, however, that the community aspect of festivals is not always what draws people there in the first place. Describing camping festivals as an environment with alternate rules, he suggests that many are first drawn there because they are seen as a haven where drug-use is acceptable. He recognizes that drugs play an important role in festival culture, describing that different types of drugs are attributed to different genres of music. One reason that people use them is to enhance their experiences with sound at live shows.

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Reflecting on the political undertones at festivals, Alex describes a unifying consideration for the environment. He touches on communities like “Bassnectar Clean-Up,” and anecdotally recalls watching a woman dressed in a tutu dancing around at a festival, picking up trash. He also recalls people challenging him for applying to work for Nestlé, a company that is notoriously damaging to the environment.

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Further expanding on what unites the festi-scene, Alex emphasizes, “I really think freedom, like freedom to do things and not feel judged, is the driving force.” In addition to wearing customized, hand-made costumes or dancing enthusiastically, he explains that this freedom translates to social interaction: “It’s so much easier to just go around and there aren’t those social boundaries. You don’t have to give people handshakes when you meet them. You just say hi.”

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Interview Four: Grant

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Grant is a 24 year old CEO of an Ann Arbor tech startup and U of M alum. He graduated from Michigan in 2016 with a degree in Computer Science. He has attended dozens of camping and non-camping festivals in his lifetime.

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Speaking about his relationship to music festivals, Grant articulates, “What I really fell in love with was definitely the culture more than the music.” This is not to say that he doesn’t love both jam bands and some genres in electronic music, but the allure of festival culture for Grant lay primarily in the lack of social restrictions and culture of reciprocity: “Being able to go to somewhere where a lot of the rules and the day-to-day is dropped, and you can just experience life as it is. I think both [jam band and EDM] crowds are definitely attracted to that. I know it appeals to me.” He also expands upon ways that people go out of their way to be kind at camping festivals, which makes him want to do the same in return.

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Commenting on the way this atmosphere of giving doesn’t exist in mainstream society, he says: “It’s looked down upon for some reason. That’s probably a very large egg to crack. That’s more of an assessment of this [mainstream] culture than that one.” Grant also affirms that the atmosphere of kindness and rhetoric of family is unique to a subset of camping festivals, using Ultra Music Festival, an EDM-focused non-camping festival, as a point of contrast: “I don’t think Ultra uses the term ‘fam’ as much,” as other festivals that embrace the camping festival values.

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In comparing the improvisational jam-band scene to EDM, Grant attributes jam-bands to a more relaxed culture, naming String Cheese as one of his all-time favorite live acts: “The vibes are very different [at jam concerts] than being like packed and dancing hard. I think it’s much more removed and laid back – you know, sit down, someone offers you a bowl [of marijuana], and you start talking to them.”

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Mulling over the reasons why inclusion is so central to camping festival culture, he suggests that it is a result of many small events and influences throughout history, but also the cultural and political climate of 2017 America: “[People feel], on edge at times, I think. It’s hard to say that in 2017, given all that’s going on with politics that people aren’t on edge…But you also have people who aren’t being treated the way they should be and aren’t being welcomed the way they should be whether that’s due to sexual orientation, whatever.” In contrast to outward discrimination people experience in mainstream society that causes feelings of isolation, Grant observes that, especially at camping festivals, “…[discrimination is] not fully, but closer to dissolved.”

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Grant also spoke about the way drugs are embedded in the culture, highlighting their ability to connect people communicatively: “The idea that this consciousness that we are defaulted in is one of many ways to experience it is itself wild, but also I think something cool about it is it highlights the fact that my consciousness is different than yours, that it’s all just some chemical balance…When you both take the same drug, you’re in a similar environment…same music or whatever – you start to go on these same paths and being able to meet communicatively a lot more naturally.”

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He also acknowledges that each festival and each different year has a different “flavor” of atmosphere, and festival culture overall has evolved with time. Using Electric Forest as one example, he suggests that as it became more popular and crowds grew in size, so did the contingent of the, “frat-boy-let’s-get-fucked-up crowd.” He remarks that the sentiments of “purity,” “freedom,” and “cleansing," are more central to newer, smaller festivals.