Music Festivals as a Movement for Social Justice
The Music Festival Movement began for many people with Woodstock, during the radical times of the 1960’s. It grew in the hotbed of the civil rights movements, but has evolved cross-culturally to keep our activist hearts alive. It became a way of life that supports our values and life ways, and it has spread like wildfire all over the world. It’s multigenerational, multicultural and crosses all spectrums. It constantly plants self replicating memes that compel our sociocultural evolutions.
Festivals now advocate and promote everything on the fringe, everything diverse that promotes adaptation and survival, that is crying for manifestation—raising of consciousness, building of communities both physical and cyber, awareness of issues such as decriminalization of marijuana….
Where the movement once sought radical sociopolitical transformations, its now concerned with building community, and changing individuals as well as political and social institutions. These festivals are cultural activities that nurture sociopolitical consciousness.Thus, the music festival culture supports sociopolitical action as well as personal transformation. Burning Man, EvolveFest, Cannastock, and many more reflect this consistently, year after year.
While
the world appears to be going crazy and going down in flames,
festivals provide a climate in which to stay the course. Stresses
such as the economy and politics make people need to bond together to
seek solace in one another, thereby drawing together like minds, and
minds ready to awaken, and focus them all on the issues at hand. The
Occupy Movement also raised the stakes tremendously.
Bonding
at festivals has kept our resolve to fight the “Powers that Be”
alive and well. People then go back to their own communities and
plant the memes and compel even further movements and growth, thereby
reinvigorating sociopolitical change even more..
Protests
have shown that they alone are not enough to keep the movements
alive. We also need festivals to keep our movements alive. It’s a
symbiotic relationship that is fed off of the political climate and
that feeds it as well. If festivals were confined to the
subcultures, they could become self-insulating and just have a
limited life of their own, but no, they are inclusive of all people,
and so they thrive on the constant input of new ideas, new music, new
styles and life ways that are a tremendous source of inspiration and
empowerment.
Festivals
are like a foundational base for ongoing growth of the movements they
promote. They are fertile ground for plugging in and taking action,
for actually being the change we wish to see in the world. They
compel collective action for change, as well as activate individuals
for personal change. Festivals represent the culture of our
sociopolitical movements.
The Festival movement is a direct result of the external, mainstream culture. Too many aspects of postmodern life cause terrible unhappiness, and so humans create alternatives to feed our souls and keep us going. This movement has been successful at changing mainstream culture. Internally, this movement has developed its own sub cultures as well, with symbols, rituals, rhetoric, and values that can be used as resources in pursuing goals and as sources of solidarity that help bring in new participants and keep activists committed.
Movements can bring about social change by shaping public discourse or otherwise altering existing culture. Icons such as Woody Harrelson, who has attended many good festivals, have done a lot to inspire and grow it even more.
The connections between the Festival Movement and Collective Action are clear. They are expressions of common values that must be expressed, to depressurize the rage and depression that would take so many under. We are energized, overjoyed and empowered by it.
