We just got back from Bonnaroo yesterday evening, having played two of the most enjoyable sets of music of our lives, with hearts full of gratitude that we were able to participate in an event of this scale so well lovingly and thoughtfully enacted. Over the ten years that the festival has existed, I'm sure that many people have written extensively about what makes it such a cool thing, but that's not gonna stop me from rambling on about it for a minute here.
As far as music goes, Bonnaroo was fantastic. We got to see (and sort of hang out with) Man Man, we got to see (and definitely not sort of hang out with) My Morning Jacket, The Arcade Fire, Buffalo Springfield, as well as Omar Souleyman, and Hanggai, and Big Boi and Eminem. A lot is made of how Bonnaroo started out as a jam band festival and grew into something with a bigger tent, so to speak. This is true, but a more interesting way to look at it is that Bonnaroo has created its own syncretic musical scene that is increasingly acknowledged by the wider music world. My Morning Jacket may be the best example of a band that didn't really have a stylistic home (vaguely country, vaguely classic rock, but not Wilco enough to be truly alt-country, signed to a label defined by space rock bands) when they started, and have become what for lack of better word could be called a Bonnaroo Band. But it goes beyond that - in numerous MiniBoone discussions about what would and wouldn't appeal to a Bonnaroo crowd, what emerged was a very nuanced, but clear idea of Bonnaroo was about musically - something that seems to have developed naturally over the years from roots in jam band culture into something more all-encompassing. That this has happened is very cool, and makes Bonnaroo a fun place to hang out.
That said, music festivals seem to take pride in trying to be about more than music, and Bonnaroo is no exception. This is a valiant effort in that it allows for social, environmental and political activism to take a more visible appearance than they do in real life, and also important in that it puts a focus on the creation of a community that can maintain existence beyond the duration of a musical performance. By making a music festival about something conceptually (dare I say) bigger than music, you also make a festival physically bigger than music alone would necessitate. While walking through the Eminem crowd Saturday night from the soundboard tent all the way back to the main entrance to the camping areas (and briefly beyond, when Sam and I got turned around), the physical and conceptual enormity of this thing became increasingly obvious.
In putting on Bonnaroo, what's created really is a temporary community (I'll stop short of saying "town" or "city") with a population selected through the attraction of the musical acts performing over the course of the weekend. Looking at it this way, the creation of Bonnaroo creates all the kinds of problems that any community of 100,000 people develops naturally - you start with a music festival with vaguely utopian, though still capitalistic, ideals, and end up dealing with things like power imbalances, class issues (tent city as a voluntarily populated shanty town surrounding an affluent Centeroo), and all the problems that come with the need to provide essential human services to a large number of people who expect and deserve them. The creators of Bonnaroo have created a real fake community, and it seems to me that it would be extremely easy for the implications of this to run totally out of control.
And yet they don't. While I imagine that it's quite a rush to have the sort of power that running this operation provides, the people at the top remain benevolent dictators to an almost ridiculous degree. It takes a lot to overrun the anti-utopian tendencies implanted in me through too much serious literature at too early an age, but Bonnaroo exposes some cracks in the facade. Everything at this shit runs smoothly, everyone seems happy, nobody seems to be getting shat on, and most importantly everything seems to be done with the best intentions. Admittedly, I am able to make this comment from the relative comfort of the guest campsite, within a four minute walk to the backstage open bar, but from this privileged perspective I was able to see a tiny glimpse of some of the behind the scenes workings of the thing, which impressed me possibly even more than being able to see how much fun the kids were having.
When more toilets were needed, more were brought in. When lines were long, I didn't see anyone complain. When people got drunk, they didn't fight each other (as far as I could tell). I've heard talk of trying to make Bonnaroo bigger. This makes sense. It's obvious that people are trying to make a profit off of this thing, and that's fine - I'll go one step farther: that's American! - but there's something to be said of a scale beyond which a situation this perfect may start to break down. A bigger festival means more diversity, more excitement, but it brings it's own problems with it too, and I'd hate to see what the Bonnaroo people have built into such a good thing turn into something like today's Lollapalooza, or even worse, Woodstocks '94 and '99.
To try and pull this back to reality, I basically just wanted to say that MiniBoone had a wonderful time, and we appreciate the effort that everyone put into making Bonnaroo happen, the effort that everyone will continue to exert towards making it happen again next year, and the great care and thought which go into maintaining an integrity that is rarely seen in anything, let alone a big ass music festival.
_Doug
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