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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 at all times assumed that music festivals weren’t for me.
Music festivals, I believed, had 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.
However there was one thing good about Newport.
Two weekends in the past, in opposition to the backdrop of Narragansett Bay, Folks Pageant–goers sat on picnic blankets and slathered themselves with mineral sunscreen. They had been dorky dads in Life Is Good T-shirts, outdated girls carrying wide-brimmed hats, and infants sleeping peacefully in strollers. Positive, some folks had been in all probability on medicine—however they had been chill medicine, the type that I’d heard of.
The vibes? They had been glorious.
All of that is seemingly widespread information amongst festival-knowers and New Englanders, however for this Midwesterner, the Newport Folks Pageant was a nice shock. Sure, at first I cringed on the warm-and-fuzzy signage demanding that each one company “Be current. Be variety. Be open. Be collectively.” However then I believed, “Okay, certain.” And I let all of it in.
The Newport Folks Pageant occurs each summer season at Fort Adams State Park, the house of a pentagonal fort that was an energetic Military put up for 100 years—however, in accordance to its director of customer expertise, “by no means as soon as needed to fireplace a shot in anger.” Of course it didn’t. As a result of, you see, Newport is peaceable and sort. That’s it’s complete factor. Even the music goes gently.
Performances begin slightly earlier than midday and finish at nightfall, which suggests you might have loads of dinner time and an excellent evening’s sleep, an incredibly vital precedence for me nowadays. I acquired 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 slightly beneath an hour every, tickling banjo strings and warbling tender ballads. One of many levels was powered by bikes and the solar.
“It’s simply so healthful,” 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 had been intense, however no person pushed. The meals is dear, however you may convey your personal if you need. At one level, a toddler with no pants chased seagulls away from our picnic spot. The one 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, nevertheless it didn’t. It’s Newport!
Final 12 months, Folks Fest–goers had been delighted by an unscheduled look from Joni Mitchell, who sang on the principle stage with the artist Brandi Carlile. Shock showings like these have occurred so frequently over the previous a number of years that attendees have come to anticipate 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.
Possibly the pageant organizers didn’t prepare for a celeb drop-in on goal, one Redditor posited, as a option to reset expectations. In any case, some regulars are nervous that the Newport Folks Pageant has gotten too huge—that the promise of a shock look is making issues really feel busier, much less low-key. “Possibly,” one other Redditor recommended, “the group who simply desires to see the large names will suppose twice subsequent 12 months.”
Combating to safeguard the important essence of a music pageant appears slightly pretentious. However perhaps there’s one thing to it. Newport is a gem of an expertise; its attraction feels nicely price defending.
Newport wasn’t good. The ticket costs are method too excessive to go yearly. My persistence 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 particular person. However I can say that my first pageant gained’t be my final. Typically it’s good to be improper.
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Dispatches
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Night Learn
Earlier this month, the Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil printed his memoir, Ready to Be Arrested at Night time. The e book 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 printed an account of his expertise in The Atlantic in 2021, in a sequence of essays titled “One by One, My Buddies Have been Despatched to the Camps.” Spend time with Izgil’s essays this weekend.
After I spoke with Izgil lately, he described the e book, and his work in The Atlantic, as a option to “increase consciousness as a lot as doable in regards to the disaster in my homeland”—but in addition to discover “what it means for a person to undergo the sorts of issues that we needed to undergo.” That non-public component, in addition to what his translator, Joshua L. Freeman, has referred to as “a poet’s energy of expression,” is maybe why Izgil’s writing has resonated with so many readers.
— Isabel Fattal, senior editor
Extra From The Atlantic
Tradition Break
Learn. Lament for Julia, a newly printed e book by the late novelist Susan Taubes, additional reveals her battle to make herself complete.
Watch. The Atlantic’s new partnership with PBS, Washington Week With The Atlantic, can 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 Folks Pageant 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 pageant.
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 Folks people are so good (and contribute a lot to the native economic system). However we’re an island, you see: Newport is the “island” a part of “Rhode Island.” Our native roads had been laid out when this space was largely farms surrounding a giant Navy base. So when folks come to “be current and be variety,” I growl and mutter about restaurant crowds and the site visitors bottleneck on Thames Avenue and the way I like it 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 have now a jazz pageant, 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 put up workplace? I’ve some errands to run.
— Tom
Katherine Hu contributed to this article.
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