Are Festivals Really Coming Back?
And is it corny that I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it?
Lately I’ve seen lineups dropping for this fall. Yes, this fall, as in fall 2021, and at first (not gonna’ lie), I was skeptical. However, with the recent up-shoot in vaccine production and uptake, it looks like herd immunity might be well on the way by late-summer 2021… and festivals might be soon to follow.
Firefly Festival 2019, living my best liiiiiife!
Why we need festivals to keep existing, when it’s safe, in some form
Putting personal reasons aside for a moment (I’ll get to those next, of course), let’s just face the facts— the live music industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, which employs thousands upon thousands of individuals per year. From musicians to technicians to roadies to venue owners to promoters to custodians to security to literally everything else it takes to pull off live music (especially a large, multi-day festival event), the festival industry being axed for the last year and a half has put many, many people out of work indefinitely. Though it’s not safe now to gather in a festival format (though some outdoor, drive-in shows have had moderate success), festivals being on an indefinite moratorium is not sustainable.
When you displace that many jobs from your economy and cannot replace them, what are people supposed to do? From a sheer financial POV, festivals generate revenue beyond belief each festival season (in the US, typically late-spring to early-fall), which cannot be replaced by live-stream or other “virtual” events at the same scale.
Now, for personal reasons (and I have many)— we need festivals to continue existing in some form, because they are the single best way to experience multiple musicians (both ones you know and ones you’ve yet to discover) in an accessible setting over a period of time. Festivals are typically incredibly well-planned and executed (well, excluding that Fyre Festival fiasco— thanks, Ja Rule), and they allow music-fans from all genres and creeds to come together in a well set-up place to experience multiple acts across multiple stages all while having access to food, water, and general comfort amenities, and that’s important. You can literally start at 11 AM at most festivals, hanging out in the lawn and watching “smaller” (AKA, your next new favorite band!) play before lunch, and spend the entire day exploring until the headliners play, on the same stages, in the same setting.
What’s more, festivals are notorious for their communities, and some festivals I’ve been to have some of the best communities (and the most fun activities to stimulate your mind and open your heart, as hippie-dippy as that may sound) I’ve ever had the pleasure of engaging with. Festivals like Okeechobee in Florida, for example, have a tight-knit community, complete with Facebook groups and massive coordinated campsites, that you can immerse yourself in and feel at home in. I could go on and on forever about our neighbors at certain festivals and how close we’ve gotten to some of them (we attended the wedding of a couple we met at Firefly Festival 2018, for example), but the best way to learn about these communities is to experience them for yourselves, and if festivals don’t come back, you’ll never have the pleasure— and that really breaks my heart.
Overall, I have hope that some festivals may be on the horizon for later in 2021— and you can be assured that if my husband and I are fully vaccinated by then, you’ll quite likely see us at more than one of them.
What do you miss most about festivals? Have you ever been to a festival? If so, what are your favorite festivals, both big and small? Let’s discuss,
Xoxo, MM.