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I used to be skeptical of music festivals. Then I went to Newport.
First, listed below are 4 new tales from The Atlantic:
The Music Goes Gently
I had all the time assumed that music festivals weren’t for me.
Music festivals, I believed, have been for warm individuals who like digital dance music and pulling all-nighters. They’re for rolling on cool new leisure medicine with unusual names. They’re for carrying bras as shirts.
But there was one thing good about Newport.
Two weekends in the past, towards the backdrop of Narragansett Bay, Folk Festival–goers sat on picnic blankets and slathered themselves with mineral sunscreen. They have been dorky dads in Life Is Good T-shirts, previous women carrying wide-brimmed hats, and infants sleeping peacefully in strollers. Sure, some folks have been most likely on medicine—however they have been chill medicine, the type that I’d heard of.
The vibes? They have been wonderful.
All of that is probably widespread data amongst festival-knowers and New Englanders, however for this Midwesterner, the Newport Folk Festival was a nice shock. Yes, at first I cringed on the warm-and-fuzzy signage demanding that every one company “Be present. Be kind. Be open. Be together.” But then I believed, “Okay, sure.” And I let all of it in.
The Newport Folk Festival occurs each summer time at Fort Adams State Park, the house of a pentagonal fort that was an energetic Army publish for 100 years—however, in accordance to its director of customer expertise, “never once had to fire a shot in anger.” Of course it didn’t. Because, you see, Newport is peaceable and sort. That’s it’s complete factor. Even the music goes gently.
Performances begin a bit earlier than midday and finish at nightfall, which suggests you’ve gotten loads of meal time and a great evening’s sleep, an incredibly essential precedence for me as of late. I bought to listen to Maggie Rogers belt “Alaska” and watch Lana Del Rey dance in entrance of a set of gilded mirrors—however I additionally noticed a dozen smaller bands, whose names I didn’t acknowledge and who carried out tight units a bit beneath an hour every, tickling banjo strings and warbling tender ballads. One of the phases was powered by bikes and the solar.
“It’s just so wholesome,” I texted my boyfriend one evening. I had simply witnessed a complete crowd of individuals clapping as a canine floated by on a ship.
The crowds have been intense, however no person pushed. The meals is dear, however you’ll be able to carry your personal if you’d like. At one level, a toddler with no pants chased seagulls away from our picnic spot. The solely all-nighter pulled was by considered one of my buddies, who stole away to a yacht one evening with its good-looking captain. That story might have had a sinister ending, but it surely didn’t. It’s Newport!
Last 12 months, Folk Fest–goers have been delighted by an unscheduled look from Joni Mitchell, who sang on the principle stage with the artist Brandi Carlile. Surprise showings like these have occurred so recurrently over the previous a number of years that attendees have come to count on them: Paul Simon, Bon Iver, Mumford and Sons, Dolly Parton. This 12 months, although, save for a couple of fast songs by James Taylor, who stopped by a small stage one afternoon along with his spouse and son, there was no main sudden visitor. What occurred? attendees puzzled on-line and in actual life.
Maybe the competition organizers didn’t prepare for a celeb drop-in on goal, one Redditor posited, as a strategy to reset expectations. After all, some regulars are apprehensive that the Newport Folk Festival has gotten too huge—that the promise of a shock look is making issues really feel busier, much less low-key. “Maybe,” one other Redditor prompt, “the crowd who just wants to see the big names will think twice next year.”
Fighting to safeguard the important essence of a music competition appears a bit pretentious. But perhaps there’s one thing to it. Newport is a gem of an expertise; its attraction feels effectively value defending.
Newport wasn’t good. The ticket costs are method too excessive to go yearly. My endurance wore skinny on the times when the solar beat down and I couldn’t discover shade. And utilizing a port-a potty with 10,000 different folks for 3 consecutive days has taken one thing from me spiritually that I’ll by no means get again.
I nonetheless wouldn’t name myself a music-festival individual. But I can say that my first competition gained’t be my final. Sometimes it’s good to be fallacious.
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- Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a particular counsel for the continued Hunter Biden investigation.
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Dispatches
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Evening Read
Earlier this month, the Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil revealed his memoir, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night. The guide is a chronicle of Izgil and his household’s escape from China in 2017, in the course of the ongoing Uyghur genocide within the nation. Izgil first revealed an account of his expertise in The Atlantic in 2021, in a sequence of essays titled “One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps.” Spend time with Izgil’s essays this weekend.
When I spoke with Izgil just lately, he described the guide, and his work in The Atlantic, as a strategy to “raise awareness as much as possible about the crisis in my homeland”—but in addition to discover “what it means for an individual to go through the kinds of things that we had to go through.” That private component, in addition to what his translator, Joshua L. Freeman, has known as “a poet’s power of expression,” is maybe why Izgil’s writing has resonated with so many readers.
— Isabel Fattal, senior editor
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Read. Lament for Julia, a newly revealed guide by the late novelist Susan Taubes, additional reveals her wrestle to make herself complete.
Watch. The Atlantic’s new partnership with PBS, Washington Week With The Atlantic, might be moderated by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and premieres on PBS tonight at 8 p.m. ET.
Play our day by day crossword.
P.S.
Fellow Atlantic author Tom Nichols right here, sneaking into Elaine’s appreciation of the Newport Folk Festival to make a confession: I’ve lived in and round Newport for happening 30 years … and but I’ve by no means gone to the competition.
Like so many residents of vacation spot spots and seashore cities, I’ve perfected grousing about vacationers—and sure, I do know, it’s unseemly, particularly when the Folk of us are so good (and contribute a lot to the native economic system). But we’re an island, you see: Newport is the “island” a part of “Rhode Island.” Our native roads have been laid out when this space was principally farms surrounding a giant Navy base. So when folks come to “be present and be kind,” I growl and mutter about restaurant crowds and the site visitors bottleneck on Thames Street and the way I find it irresistible right here—in October.
The factor is, I’m additionally sort of mendacity. The individuals who come right here for the music, as Elaine discovered, are pretty, and these occasions (we’ve got a jazz competition, too) actually do add a sparkle to a spot that’s fairly quiet many of the 12 months. So ignore my grumbling—however might you not park close to the publish workplace? I’ve some errands to run.
— Tom
Katherine Hu contributed to this text.
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