Music and Festivals – Eccentric Bohemian

OUR ATTENDANCE

It has often been asked by friends and fellow travelers what type of music and festivals are on the horizon, and how do we decide which music festivals to attend. The answer is far from simple. There are many variables that influence the equation that eventually leads to deciding. Surprisingly, finances are often lower on the list than other factors. Somehow we always manifest travels either through volunteering at the festival or a near by nonprofit project. We negotiate our visits based on projects needs and our available talents.

AWARENESS

The first factor taken into consideration is the festival’s cause and the impact it has on the environment. Secondly, what is the overall message being delivered by the promoters and performers. Those are the top two factors when making decisions what festivals to attend. The next most significant factor is the culture and how the hosting country promotes human rights both locally and globally. Following that, we always review past festival line-ups and review the after-movie and compare those to the current promotions. We tend to prefer music festivals that are hosted away from the metropolis. We prefer festivals where people are subjected to being separated from everyday comforts and conveniences, those where personal interaction is a high probability. Finally, before finances there is genre. Many of us have experienced a wide spectrum of music throughout our lives and have musical backgrounds. Some of us are or have been musicians, instructors, radio show hosts, recording studio managers, digital media professionals, band managers, and singers/writers. Once we have the top twelve festivals in which we consider within the paradigm, we then consider costs and the time it would take to raise revenue or garner volunteer activities to offset the expenses.

When considering genres, we almost always take into consideration the messages that are contained in the lyrics, and the frequency (hertz) of the music over all. We take into consideration music theory and historical influences. We never attend any festival steeped in hateful lyrics, nor those that promote violence or have notoriously provoked abuse of any life forms, specifically upon human, animals and destruction of natural environments such as forests, grasslands and aquatic habitats. We never attend festivals that promote abuse or addiction, or perpetuate victimizing under privileged. We never attend festivals that actively promote animal abuse or misuse including rodeos. We never attend festivals that incite rage. We attend outdoor venues only that offer camping for attendees and other lodging opportunities rather than mega-corporation lodging facilities. We attend only those festivals that are inclusive of diverse cultures.

We stand true to our convictions, thus ruling out many festivals. Most of those festivals lack the essence of qualifying as a festival by ignoring health and wellness events and activities among other criteria. Those sort of gatherings are more aligned with being a concert and include rock, heavy metal, grunge, country-western, rap, hip-hop, and occasionally reggae. Another factor we consider is if the festivals’ artists include local performers from the region and the impact the festival has on the community. We consider if local people are employed and equitably compensated financially, do the festival promoters bring people from outside the community or region thereby creating disproportion to local or marginalized cultures.

Aside from all that, some of our preferred artists include the following:

Rising Appalachia

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