SERIOUS WONDER | Music Festivals: Microcosm of Future Consciousness

If you have had the opportunity to camp out at one of the many weekend music festivals around the country, such as Bonnaroo or Earthdance, you know the experience is often about escaping the everyday as much as it is about listening to amazing music.

While some people attending, leave the weekend, exactly as they walked in, it is at least as common to find people who have had transformative experiences of one kind or another. My most-recent expedition into this world was at the Lightning in a Bottle Festival in Southern California, and it proved fascinating.

For too many adults the everyday is characterized by words like work, restrictions, routine, obligations, consumerism, traffic jam, conflict, reality, and maybe even alienation or despair. Music festivals can be an antidote, providing a space for freedom, play, creativity, fantasy, experimentation, connection, passion, joy and transcendence.

At Lighting in a Bottle, or LIB as it is known affectionately, I saw and experienced this first hand. Some people wore a different, fanciful costume each day as a way to express themselves. Others camped with old college friends to reconnect with the people present when their identities were forming and continue their explorations. Quite a few experimented with mind and mood-altering drugs. Hula hoops, glowing lights and sticks were twirled and spun to recapture the playfulness of youth.

Some danced madly to frenetic music in a near state of trance they later described as deeply spiritual. Many attended lectures on emerging topics like renewable energy, abundance, permaculture, nutrition, polyamory, astrology, indigenous knowledge and even alien communication. Most participated in at least one workshop on yoga, meditation, chanting, ecstatic dance or other spiritual practices. And of course a few had a bad experience or tried some things they never want to do again.

Anthropologists who visit unfamiliar tribes to understand the role of rituals in those societies identify some rituals as liminal experiences. During liminal periods, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[1] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.[2]

Could music festivals create this type of experience? The Woodstock Festival is famous the world over for heralding in the revolutions of consciousness and culture that emerged in the 1960’s. Was it the cause or effect of these social changes? The answer is probably both, marking it as a liminal space of transition in between the past and the future.[3]

Perhaps the granddaddy of all modern day liminal festivals is Burning Man, attracting 60,000 people from around the world every Labor Day to the harshest Nevada desert. All of the freedom and creativity of the typical music festival is multiplied 10 fold here. Their website describes the experience this way:

“You belong here and you participate. You’re not the weirdest kid in the classroom — there’s always somebody there who’s thought up something you never even considered… When you drive back down the dusty roads toward home, you slowly reintegrate to the world you came from….At the end, though your journey to and from Burning Man are finished, you embark on a different journey — forever.”

At LIB the organizers take pride in the fact that it is not a corporate event, and while there are vendors and items for sale many of the big name, mainstream consumer product companies are not invited or allowed to advertise. They also recycle, compost and reduce waste extensively, use carbon offsets, biofuels and other innovative solutions to reduce their environmental impact. The infrastructure of the festival itself is part of the experiment in creating a better future. Burning Man has similar values but takes many of them to further extremes, for example by being a “commerce-free event” where are all purchases are prohibited except for coffee and ice.

Nearly every major institution, company and organization around the world spends valuable time and money on regular visioning, brainstorming and organizational change retreats because they keep these organizations fresh and vital. These are the liminal spaces of the working world. Is it time we formally recognize the importance of liminal spaces to enrich and revitalize our culture and lives more generally?

In these trying times when our institutions and leaders too often seem to be failing us despite their best intentions, what we may need are new ways of interacting with and structuring our world. Surprisingly enough, the lowly music festival may provide the key that unlocks the creativity and openness needed to discover these solutions. And perhaps that is something you want to be a part of. If nothing else, at least it might be fun!

What are some of your favorite music festivals? Have you had a transformative experience while attending?

WRITTEN BY: Brendan Miller

June 11, 2012 By Brendan Miller

About the author

Brendan Miller has been an engaged student of consciousness for over 18 years. He is most interested in how understanding consciousness can help us to live more fulfilled lives. He has degrees from Harvard University, MIT and Brown University.