OPINION:Something has been lost in festival world. The gig has sold out, man . . .
‘A FESTIVAL celebrates temporary liberation from the established order, it marks the suspension of all hierarchy, rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Crowds of people seized by a sudden awareness of their power and unification through a celebration of their own ideas and creations . . .”
Thus reads a greying leaflet I found the other day. Picked up in some godforsaken festival field a generation or so ago, it was no doubt published and disseminated by some societal malcontents.
It’s not the sort of radical come-all-ye talk you’ll be getting at this weekend’s Oxegen festival.
Somewhere between the veggie burgers/Rizla papers/Anarchist’s Cookbook stall and today’s corporate sponsorship stages and VIP enclosures, something has been lost in festival world.
The wristband-only bar for the chosen at Oxegen over the weekend will no doubt be indistinguishable from the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel after an international rugby match. Coverage will be more about what the WAGs and models wore than of any countercultural threat to the established order.
This year’s Oxegen features the Vodafone Stage (was it for this telecommunications sponsorship deal that Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar at the Isle Of Wight festival?) and the Heineken Greenspace stage (a name neatly coalescing nature and alcohol).
But Oxegen is regularly voted one of Europe’s best music festivals, and this is because it caters perfectly for its demographic (predominantly 18- to 25-year-olds) and is solicitous in providing what this cohort desires – which is essentially a huge “free house” for the weekend, with beer on tap.
As such, it is a reflection of the changed socio-political environment, and another reminder of just how anachronistic the rock festival of previous generations must appear to today’s festival lotus-eaters.
Academic and political culture expert, George McKay, has been tracing the changed dynamics of festival culture and has written about how – far from today’s mainstream date on society’s calendar – the music festival used to be “about idealism, anarchy, being young, getting old disgracefully . . . getting out of it”.
Even the present pope, Benedict XVI, was hip to the radicalism of the music festival when he wrote: "Rock music is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects" (from The Spirit Of The Liturgy(2000)).
I’m sorry, but those words can only have been written by someone who has been to and indeed indulged in all a music festival has to offer. Is there something we don’t know about Pope Benedict XVI?
For McKay, the key features of festival culture are a youthful audience, open-air performances, popular music, the development of a lifestyle, camping, local opposition, police distrust and even the odd rural riot. But I don’t think the gardaí around Punchestown this weekend will have anything to worry about – save from running out of stomach pumps.
Like those old yellow and red “Nuclear Power – Nein, Danke!” badges, you get a sentimental glow when you read McKay writing about “the music festival as ongoing radical protest” and “the political praxis and discourse of festival life”. But such gently seditious talk has now been consigned, along with those warped Joni Mitchell vinyl records, to the dustbin of a previous generation’s cultural history.
Yes, the rock festival can still be “a politics which admits pleasure, pop and rock music, temporary community, landscape, nature, promiscuity and narcotic”, but there won’t be any talk of the “commanding heights of the economy” or such like this weekend.
The chattering classes have their new hula hoop – their Twitter accounts, and instead of joining with local peasant farmers (hard to find in Co Kildare this weather) to incite rural revolt and equitable land distribution, they will be “OMG’ing” and “LOL’ing” their weekend away in 140 characters or less.
Enjoy Oxegen this weekend. But somewhere between the Vodafone and the Heineken stages do pause to remember the early pioneering spirit behind what you are now experiencing for yourself.
And stay away from the mushrooms.
BRIAN BOYDis a music journalist