By Jordan Wannemacher
Spring is always an exciting time for music lovers because of one very important thing: summer festival lineup announcements.
The past few months I’ve been scouring through festival websites, weighing out the pros and cons of each. The anticipation of great summer music is what gets me through the cold winter months and the strain of my schoolwork.
As a lifelong music lover, I stumbled upon the festival scene back in 2007 when a friend invited me to Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn.
Bonnaroo is place full of 80,000 friendly people, campsites and four days of music—my heaven. The atmosphere of chill Widespread Panic fans, raging Sasha and Digweed people and peaceful Flaming Lips-heads was a dream.
“I’m going back every year!” I told myself.
I spent the last few years attending Bonnaroo true to my word, with last summer’s exception of going to Allgood in West Virginia instead. Although I skipped a summer, my festival heart would always remain in Manchester, Tenn. on that beautiful Bonnaroo farm.
Until now.
Bonnaroo has kept with their recent tradition of “clues” on Twitter and Facebook leading up to the announcement of their lineup. With other festivals such as Wakarusa, Hangout and Coachella announcing stellar lineups over the last few months, my curiosity and anticipation for the Bonnaroo lineup grew stronger.
In past years, Bonnaroo has strayed further and further from their jam band roots that brought the festival to life, incorporating acts such as Crystal Castles, Against Me! and Pearl Jam, but I was OK with it. Their proximity to “mainstream” music has grown stronger and stronger, with acts such as Kings of Leon, MGMT and Bruce Springsteen coming into their scene. But I was OK with it.
The lineup for 2011 was announced yesterday. I sat at my computer in my art history class refreshing the page like a rabid maniac at 11:59 a.m., waiting for the reveal on their website.
Eminem. I am not OK with that.
Not just Eminem, but Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa. What?
How am I supposed to go to a festival and enjoy the happy, hippie vibes of Bonnaroo when Lil Wayne’s raspy screaming is in my ear? Eminem is one of the most negative rappers around; what more of a contradiction to the Bonnaroo vibes could you possibly ask for?
Now, I’m not knocking Lil Wayne, Eminem or Wiz Khalifa as musicians. This is not an attack on the quality of their music at all. All three are very talented, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them all in a concert elsewhere. They just don’t belong at Bonnaroo.
Bonnaroo, once a weekend escape for friendly, peaceful “under-the-grid” jam band fans, has now become a commercial outlet to shove as much random crap into one lineup as possible—a complete contradiction to the roots and foundations of where it began.
I know everyone has been complaining “MTV bought Bonnaroo, so they sold out,” but I’ve never seen a drop of MTV propaganda at the festival. MTV would be a great target to blame for the mainstream commercialization of underground or indie music scenes, but I’m pointing my finger at Superfly, the company in charge of the whole production.
Bonnaroo/Superfly may feel like the “diversity” of the lineup this year will bring more fans and more attention to their 10-year anniversary festival, but instead they’re just pushing fans like myself away. The people who helped make the festival what it is today now won’t go anywhere near the event.
If I wanted to listen to Eminem, I’d tape the Grammys and watch him. I hear enough unwanted chants of Khalifa’s “BLACK AND YELLOW BLACK AND YELLOW” in my day-to-day life. Bonnaroo is supposed to be my escape into hippie-dom and happiness, free from the people who want to “walk it out” (via Lil Wayne).
These, of course, are all just my personal opinions. How the general public officially reacts to Bonnaroo lineup pans out will not be known until June 9 at the start of the festival. My heart will always be in Manchester, Tenn. on that sunny day in 2007 when I first arrived, and I will still honor Bonnaroo as my introduction to the music festival scene.
With that said, you can find me at Wakarusa.
