Music Festivals — An Essential Experience Of Love

Recounting communal love in times of physical distancing.

Why are we drawn to music festivals in wildly large scores of collectives? Why do we, as a species, love banding for and bonding to organized — and sometimes disorganized — styles of music?

What is it about groups of people converging at a certain spot to listen to, dance to, sing to beats, lyrics, and symphonies of various types, whereby a largely homogeneous source of stimuli bursts open a floodgate of love, joy, and camaraderie?

Why do we leave every music festival feeling exhausted, spent, legless, and dehydrated, but optimistic, excited, hopeful, calm, encouraged, happy, and connected?

Why does every being of the human species and her aunt have to attend at least one music festival in their lives to reveal the answers to the questions above?

Why do we leave every music festival feeling exhausted, spent, legless, and dehydrated, but optimistic, excited, hopeful, calm, encouraged, happy, and connected?

I’m going to run you through a music festival I attended with a bunch of friends — old and new — in January this year. It took place in India.

Please bear in mind, that me outlining to you my experience of a music festival is unrelated to the genre of music I love, because from the outset, I’m going to presume that the reader is sufficiently intelligent to choose a festival with a genre that sits well with her/his predilection and broad liking of personally meaningful music, irrespective of culture, language, or time period.

The organization hosting the event is a global electronic music brand, with shows they’ve successfully held across the seas. This was their first point of entry into the Indian electronic music space, and no better venue to pick than the very thumping heart of this genre in India — Bangalore.

Scrolling through the initial lineup of artists, my friends and I instinctively, wordlessly knew that this festival was right down our alley. Good music of our choice binds us together, and through the year, each year, my friends and I are constantly exchanging, reviewing, admiring, and critiquing electronic music across the wide spectrum on the internet.

It performs the function of strong social glue and infuses massively oxygenated blood into our friendship.

After a bit of convincing, cajoling, emotional blackmailing and cornering, every member of the group finally booked flights and festival passes about two weeks before the event. Adrenaline rushed in. We created a WhatsApp group on the fly, dedicated to sharing futile news, swinging emotions, personal anxieties and sudden moments of anticipation with each member of the group. The group was dripping in non-stop messages, music sets, set timings, favourite artists and information about the amenities provided.

This whole unofficial, pre-attendance package was unadulterated, unfettered fun, building the preliminary stage for what was expected — heart-throbbing beats and limitless jumping and jiving.

When all of us arrived at the house we were staying in the day before the festival, the exhilaration unleashed itself. Blaring music took over the apartment, and we road-tested nearly every artist to slot them into three spontaneous categories — definitely hear, maybe and definitely out.

After an enjoyable push-and-pull and a few argumentative deadlocks later, we realized that out of about 30 odd artists performing, the “definitely out” category had only about 2 names, illustrative of the level of excitement and focused passion, ratified and validated by each festival-goer present. None of us slept that night.

Come festival day, the brewing energy yanked us out of the house at an early hour. We had on our sneakers and bright, festival sunglasses to match. It was on.

We were among the first few to arrive on day 1 of 2. The music started at 1 p.m., and was to keep flowing through the speakers till 1 a.m. For a festival lover, a music lover, and an electronic music lover, that’s 12 hours of reverie, hope, escape, engagement, enlightenment, and intense emotion.

For many, it’s among the most radically fulfilling of human experiences. If you’ve been to a music festival of your choice and concur, you know there’s weight in what I’ve just written. There’s a reason we’ve been convening in groups to the sound of music since the dawn of recorded history. It tugs straight at the heart and transcends any man-made language. It’s universal.

For a festival lover, a music lover, and an electronic music lover, that’s 12 hours of reverie, hope, escape, engagement, enlightenment and intense emotion.

There were 4 performance stages set up across the venue.

One was on an open-aired terrace, one cushioned between tall trees on 3 sides in an outdoor area, and two indoor stages with high decks for the DJs and plenty of room to move around and get your groove on. Each stage was installed with vibrant lights, lasers, and smoke machines, the grand power of which really kicked in when the sun set. The speakers were humongous, releasing sparkling clear sound that gave attention to every element of every track and performance — a DJ’s dream. The audience’s too.

Walking between the stages took roughly 2–3 minutes each, and we’d invariably end up meeting friends and acquaintances along the way. Some were breaking to smoke, a few refilling empty glasses, and others bumping into more friends and acquaintances, widening the circle of inclusive mayhem.

By the end of a festival of this kind, one may, on average, end up making at least 5 new friends, and they may end up recounting this wild experience every time they meet thereafter. They will end up recounting this wild experience every time they meet thereafter.

…widening the circle of inclusive mayhem.

Sven Vath, a 55-year-old iconic German DJ, was making his debut in the country, and just as we predicted, he blew the place up with a mouth-watering, roller coaster of a set. It was a moving end to day 1.

Twelve hours of absurd, out of rhythm and loosely held together moves on the dance floor had us completely famished by the time we got home that day. Lacking the bottomless energy reserves we had when we were all of 21, we knew that making it into day 2 at 1 p.m. would be a stretch of the imagination for our 30-year-old bodies. 9 hours of sleep was mandatory that night.

Legs bruised, feet in pain, lower backs screaming for massages, and unexpected aches in unexpected places were expected, embraced and worked through.

Day 2. Final day. D-day.

After a solid rest-and-recover night, we hopped and skipped into the festival completely fresh at about 5 p.m., with 8 hours of legendary artists and legendary music lined up ahead.

Savouring every minute of the day, we spread out across the stages, everyone enjoying their own favourite style on offer.

After about 4 hours, we met at a stage where one of our commonly favourite artist was slamming the speakers, testing their resilience, reach, and power. Hands in the air, the crowd was going berserk, surrendering to the beats the DJ and the vibe threw at them. 800 people moving in unison to sound that needs no culture, creed, country, or citizenship to be understood.

It seeped down to everyone’s core. It uplifted the spirits of every spectator.

With about an hour or so left, what began on day 1 as a crew of 5 people snowballed into an acquainted crew of 20 plus.

Music was the only source of this connection.

When the music stopped and the lights came on, a bunch of us were unwilling to let go of the beautiful festival rush, and so we threw an impromptu after-party in the apartment we were staying at. All of us were dead tired and in a deep state of disbelief at the fact that it was all over, but the mood at the after-party was a calm, relaxed, and joyful acceptance. We shared diverse memories of the festival, discussed future festivals we’d like to attend and kept swinging to the brilliant surround sound at the apartment.

Our festival crew has grown larger, new friendships have been forged, and scheduling for the next few music festivals is in motion now — notwithstanding coronavirus.

There is an unspoken genius in the ability of music to temporarily break our rigid self-images (work self, family self, public self, private self, etc.) and channel it towards the artist on stage.

For several moments during a music festival, we may find ourselves shedding our worldly identities and placing them to a side, where we haven’t discarded them, but have momentarily blurred out everything that defines our daily existence and living.

We are no longer the woman or man at the office completing spreadsheets, or the woman or man at home running chores.

We are not our first names, nor are we our last names. That garb is sidelined.

Wish to be the lone dancer in the crowd? Go for it!

Wish to be a contrarian rebel? Shoot!

Wish to be the guru having an enlightened experience? Hit it!

Wish to be a character from Avatar or Star Trek? The stage is yours!

As members of a highly charged audience, we have a metaphorical blank canvas laid out in front of us, and for those few hours of energetic music, we can paint our most fantastical and desired aliases on that canvas and embody them wholly, unrestricted and free.

This can be mystically therapeutic and satisfying, because once the music stops and we pick our identity up to wear it again, that identity has a new and novel piece of human experience attached to it — the experience of an enthralling, ecstatic, communal music carnival.

And if done with friends and family, it can magnify this whole inner experience tenfold, leaving us wanting to come back for a little more, or a lot more.

But don’t just believe me, go lose yourself at a music festival of your choice when the pandemic passes. You may return to reality refreshed, restored, and vibrantly renewed.

Carpe diem!