Tennessee has always had a reputation as a place to hear great music. I know this well: I grew up in Memphis.
In Memphis, it was common to see Elvis impersonators around the city. In fact, Presley’s home, Graceland, is the second-most visited house in the country behind The White House. And if you are looking for he real flavor of the city, stroll down Beale Street and listen to classic blues music no matter what time of day.
Going to school at Lipscomb in Nashville has provided me with yet another type of music experience. And it’s not just the difference between Memphis blues and Nashville’s country music scene. While Memphis is a city known for its musical heritage, Nashville is known for its musical present, a place where where people from all over the world come to break into the music business. And it’s not just country music; it’s also rock, pop and more.
However, in the last nine years Tennessee has garnered a reputation for another kind of musical experience: the music festival. Oh sure, there’s the big CMA festival here in Nashville, but that is an outgrowth of the long-time Fan Fair country music festival.
The type of music festival I’m talking about here is one word that has come to describe an experience: “Bonnaroo.”
That modern — rock, hip-hop, country and more — music festival takes place only 50 minutes away in Manchester, Tenn.
What began as sort of a jam-band celebration in 2002 has evolved. In its ninth year has become one of the biggest and most diverse music festivals in the world.
The festival begins on Thursday, June 10, this year and I will be making my first pilgrimage to the enormous 700-acre farm for the first time in my life.
I used the word “pilgrimage” for a reason. Whenever I ask Bonnaroo veterans what to expect they tend to say the same thing: Bonnaroo feels like a community, a world all by itself. They speak of Bonnaroo as a sacred place, an adventure unlike any other.
Apparently, as soon as you enter beneath the famous Bonnaroo arch in Centeroo, the outside world fades. Nothing else matters but the Bonnaroo experience, which, for me, will be camping with some of my best friends and seeing as many bands as I can fit into four short days.
I have my bands that I have to see, which include Phoenix, The XX, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and Neon Indian to name a few. But what I think will mean the most to me on that last day will be the experiences I shared with my friends. It won’t be just the bands that I saw, but who I was with when I saw them.
From what I have heard, Bonnaroo is the kind of experience that can bind people together for life. Everyone I am going with has been before and a lot of them only know each other from past years at Bonnaroo.
As I have anticipated the beginning of the festival over the last several months, I have created high expectations. I am hoping to build stronger friendships with some people I love, create some new friendships with people I haven’t yet met, all while listening to great live music. It’s not so much a life-changing experience that I am expecting as much as a life-enriching one.
When it comes down to it, my time at Bonnaroo may be very different from what I expect it to be. But what I do know for sure is that I will be taking part in yet another aspect of Tennessee’s rich musical culture.
Check back to hear about Chris’s experience. Also, read about one of our very own professor’s Bonnaroo experiences.