Coachella Defeated My Cynicism About Music Festivals
In an ill-fated attempt to hype myself up for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, I went on YouTube to look at an inflatable blue gorilla—a stage prop for the hip-hop act Brockhampton, who had announced that Coachella would be the group’s last booking ever. The festival unfolds in two identical three-day lineups over consecutive weekends; I was attending the second weekend, and I wanted a taste of how the first one had gone. In the video I pulled up, Brockhampton stood with the gorilla, which undulated like ink in water. Yet my focus was pulled to what was at the bottom of the screen: a forest of cellphone cameras held aloft by audience members.
Not to go all “Get off my lawn,” but those cameras made me sad. The last time Coachella happened was April 2019. What have the intervening three years shown music fans if not the awfulness of living life through screens? Streamed concerts, Zoom raves—these were noble adaptations to the isolation caused by COVID-19, but they were also poor imitations, and sources of burnout. Social distancing’s cultural legacy could shake out in one of two ways: Eventually, people would get sick of their phones—or they’d forget how to enjoy the real, unmediated world altogether.
Mega music festivals might be a test case for which outcome will prevail. Maybe spending so much time away from crowds would make people rethink schlepping to a
