Say you've spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars to attend a music festival. You’ve either driven or flown hours, taken time off work, gathered and coordinated your friends, and likely been planning outfits for months to attend your favorite event of the year: Bonnaroo. Held on the idyllic location of a formerly family-owned farm in the luscious state of Tennessee, Bonnaroo represents a lot more than music to many of the attendees. For the span of four to five days, the space transforms into a colorful world where being a freak is celebrated and PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect) is the law. You get to be completely yourself and truly for many find a home and an escape from the outside world on “The Farm.” This is the truth of the 80,000 people (on average) who attend Bonnaroo over the course of the four-day event.
Now think of another perspective. You’re maybe a college student getting hands-on experience as an “extern” for the festival, maybe you can’t afford a ticket and are getting your festival fix by rigging the stages and attending, hoping to break even rather than profit. Or you’re like me and getting to do what had only been a dream a couple of years ago and not only be at this festival but be part of the team that makes the magic happen.
Now imagine that the festival gets cancelled after just one day.
In the 23-year history of the festival, Bonnaroo has been cancelled a total of three times. All three of those times have been within the last five years. The first because of COVID-19, and the other two due to weather. Many people love to blame this on the fact that Live Nation bought the controlling share of Bonnaroo back in 2015, but doing so ignores another huge factor at play, that all arts organizations should be aware of and preparing for, and that causes record rainfall seemingly everywhere, every year: climate change. The ever-changing climate is causing natural disasters at a much more frequent and extreme rate than ever seen before. Yet the main question raised when major events such as Bonnaroo cancel last minute is “why aren’t they prepared for this?” and the answer is quite simple: they’ve never had to be prior to this.
When Bonnaroo announced everything was shutting down, I was in the literal middle of the festival grounds at Centeroo, meeting with the managers to get dispatched to where I would be needed that night. Now for everyone’s understanding of how a major festival like this deals with unprecedented disasters, let’s look at how they’re run. Those who work at Bonnaroo very rarely actually work directly for the festival. I was working with the event production and management company Barnstorm, who are responsible for guest services and some other components such as sustainability. Another company is responsible for vendors, another for security, another for accessibility, etc. While these companies work together, such as Accessibility Live and Barnstorm to handle accessibility, the staff is not a monolith. On average 5,000 people work Bonnaroo each year, most camping in a restricted area of The Farm dubbed “Back 60.” I’m telling you this number, so one can understand that when a disaster happens, it’s not as simple as a “show must go on” mentality. Live Nation and Bonnaroo have to ensure that up to 85,000 people are and will remain safe. That’s more people than the Superdome, and in a much larger space that was designed for agriculture, not events.
In the days leading up to the cancellation there were a few things that hinted at this not being a regular Roo, but nothing the festival wasn’t prepared for. I had gotten there on Monday, three full days before the main festival grounds opened. Leading up to Friday, when the cancellation occurred, things were muddy, but by no means unsafe. There was daily graveling of the non-paved roads for the staff, tow trucks on call for any cars that might get stuck, and procedures that were quickly put into practice when conditions (such as lightning in the area) called for it. Many news headlines covering the cancellation claim that “Bonnaroo Cancels Festival After A Day of Rain” (The Weather Channel) but to put it simply, it wasn’t a day of rain. In the month leading up to Bonnaroo, the nearby city of Chattanooga reported over twelve inches of rainfall, more than eight inches above normal, breaking the previously held record from 1929. It wasn't one day of rain, it was over a month of record-breaking rainfall that saturated the ground, and when you have 80,000 people walking, dancing and driving over it, grass turns into mud, fast. On the actual festival grounds there had been record-breaking crowd turnout for acts such as Dom Dolla, causing the ground to turn into, say it with me, a mud pit.
Now a little mud won’t hurt anyone, but the crowds at Bonnaroo are not the same crowds as, say, Austin City Limits. The headliner for Friday was Tyler The Creator, which, as someone who has been in the pit of a Tyler show, is intense to say the least. Now what happens when you combine a crazy crowd and an unstable ground? People get hurt. And if everything is muddy and cars are getting stuck, paramedics can’t get to those injured. And what happens when people fall, get injured or pass out in a huge crowd when it's dark outside, music is playing so loud you can’t hear anything, and medics can’t get to anyone? People die. It’s important to note that while, yes, for many it was incredibly upsetting that Bonnaroo got cancelled, and many internet “experts” claim it was unnecessary to cancel, notice that there were no headlines reporting dead or injured. And that’s just touching on the main festival grounds, not even beginning to mention the campgrounds or areas with extra programming.
Overall, when it comes to how the festival on the production side handled it, they did the best they could in such a situation. Times like these are why there are “acts of God” clauses in contracts. Live Nation truly did nothing but lose money from this, those who worked still got paid, the artists still got paid, those who bought tickets (excluding those who purchased from resale sites) got completely refunded. I’ve seen many comments online arguing with the choice of cancelling the festival, and things that should have been done differently, but truthfully nothing has shown me more that people comment on things they have no actual understanding of, and arts organizations need to be aware that when they cancel programming, no matter how they handle it, people will have something to say. I saw a critique that Bonnaroo should have been paying people to work instead of relying on volunteers. While, yes, there are some volunteers at the festival, they in no way completely rely on them, and those who are staff are paid. I saw a comment talking about how the campgrounds were fine, but again, while some areas of camping were essentially untouched, others were literally underwater. Bonnaroo definitely faced some backlash, and maybe they should've cancelled the festival before it began but no matter what they were going to face mass scrutiny. At the end of the day, it's better to face backlash over lost money than lost lives.
The most concerning thing I witnessed was from attendees, quite frankly. The ethos previously preached by the Bonnaroovians of community and respect (of others, of yourself, and of the farm) seemed to go out the window. This was not true for everyone. There were attendees that banded together to put on DJ sets for those passing by, and a small marching band actually did a pop-up show right next to where I was set up for the night at one of the plazas in the campgrounds. John Summit singlehandedly saved morale by doing a secret set in one of the campgrounds. Even with this, though, it was not the general tone. I personally spent over 45 minutes with a girl who was trying to find her friend, going from med tent to med tent and asking. He had been taken away by medical staff, unconscious and unresponsive. Not a single one of his friends had gone with him. (We found him eventually at the main med tent where he was breathing and being taken care of when I left). Upon talking to my coworkers the next day, I found that was a common theme. People lost the groups they were with, or upon finding out the sad news, they decided to take any and all drugs they had, no matter how they mixed, and then lost the group they were with. Despite recommendations from staff and organizers to wait until the next day to leave, many people immediately got into their cars and tried to get out. Rather than this being helpful to anyone, many cars got stuck in the mud and it stopped staff from being able to get where they needed to go. The vendors stayed open as long as they could to make up for the thousands of dollars lost from the cancellation.
There were two major lessons I learned from Bonnaroo, one from an arts management perspective, and another from the perspective of someone who really truly loves festivals and live music. One, for the art managers, we are living in unprecedented times. It has never been more valuable to be prepared for anything that could happen. Don’t have a plan for flooding? Time to make one. Even if it’s not common for your area to flood, it's crucial to prepare for it. Don’t believe me? Look to the Appalachian area. Just because it doesn’t happen often doesn't mean it won’t. Being at Bonnaroo illustrated just how important it is to have that plan, and the headlines about the event could have been very different if they weren’t prepared. As for attendees, the most harmful thing you can do is only look out for yourself. Obviously ensure your own safety but remain calm and look out for others. Show respect and care for those around you, for yourself, and for the environment you are in. When things fall apart, it becomes more important to come together, not less. And find a way to let your friends track you; it can solve a lot of issues. Not all of them, but a lot.