Written by Matt Miller & Rusty Odom
All Photos by Bill Foster
Heading in to the 15th installment of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, I had the feeling that we might be in for a throwback year.
A big part of that was the return of The Dead. See, when Bonnaroo first began, it was a jam festival. In previous interviews with Co-Creator Ashley Capps, we found that the producers chose to go that route because the jam community was the kind that followed bands on tour wherever they went, and they also wouldn’t mind camping in a field for a few days. The finer things in life were not so important to these folks, and a family was born. Back then, one in four people had dreadlocks and smelly hugs were preferred over the everyday handshake.
But over the years, Bonnaroo opened its wings, delving in to more popular acts from every genre under the blazing hot sun. They started to put a big emphasis on comedy and film, all the while maintaining the focus on activism.
Those parts are still there, but the crowd has changed.
The music festival of today is an evolving creature. What once appealed to a very small percentage of the North American population is now a part of pop culture. Bonnaroo helped created that ethos, but it’s also suffered from it. A person born in the early 2000’s doesn’t know an America without music festivals. Nowadays, everyone is aware of the value of saving money for a weekend of shows instead of going to a show here and there throughout the year. But the market has been flooded, the prices for talent have skyrocketed and if you want the big act, you might end up having to take some of the representing agency’s smaller acts as well, lessening the lineup for nearly every festival across the board.
Yes, the festival bubble is bursting. Just this year, Wakarusa, All Good, TomorrowWorld and Counterpoint were among major festivals that called it quits (or at least went on hiatus).
But the Grandfather of the Southern festival isn’t going anywhere.
While attendance on the farm was down in 2016, there were more people at late night sets than I’ve seen in years. The strongest performances were some of my favorites in my 12 years of attendance. And thankfully, some of those dreadies returned, and those sweaty dancing hugs weren’t nearly as hard to find as in recent years.
Check out our favorites from the weekend.
Friday – Saturday – Sunday – More Images
