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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 assumed, 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 sporting bras as shirts.
However there was one thing good about Newport.
Two weekends in the past, towards the backdrop of Narragansett Bay, Folks Competition–goers sat on picnic blankets and slathered themselves with mineral sunscreen. They have been dorky dads in Life Is Good T-shirts, outdated girls sporting wide-brimmed hats, and infants sleeping peacefully in strollers. Certain, some folks have been in all probability 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 doubtless widespread information amongst festival-knowers and New Englanders, however for this Midwesterner, the Newport Folks Competition was a pleasing shock. Sure, at first I cringed on the warm-and-fuzzy signage demanding that each one company “Be current. Be sort. Be open. Be collectively.” However then I assumed, “Okay, certain.” And I let all of it in.
The Newport Folks Competition occurs each summer time at Fort Adams State Park, the house of a pentagonal fort that was an energetic Military submit for 100 years—however, in accordance to its director of customer expertise, “by no means as soon as needed to hearth 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 just a little earlier than midday and finish at nightfall, which implies you’ve got loads of dinner time and a great evening’s sleep, an incredibly vital precedence for me today. 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 just a little underneath an hour every, tickling banjo strings and warbling tender ballads. One of many phases 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 have been intense, however no person pushed. The meals is dear, however you’ll be able to carry your personal if you would like. At one level, a toddler with no pants chased seagulls away from our picnic spot. The one all-nighter pulled was by certainly one of my mates, who stole away to a yacht one evening with its good-looking captain. That story may have had a sinister ending, but it surely didn’t. It’s Newport!
Final yr, Folks Fest–goers have been delighted by an unscheduled look from Joni Mitchell, who sang on the primary stage with the artist Brandi Carlile. Shock showings like these have occurred so commonly over the previous a number of years that attendees have come to anticipate them: Paul Simon, Bon Iver, Mumford and Sons, Dolly Parton. This yr, although, save for a number of fast songs by James Taylor, who stopped by a small stage one afternoon along with his spouse and son, there was no main surprising visitor. What occurred? attendees questioned on-line and in actual life.
Possibly the competition organizers didn’t organize for a star drop-in on function, one Redditor posited, as a technique to reset expectations. In spite of everything, some regulars are nervous that the Newport Folks Competition has gotten too large—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 needs to see the large names will suppose twice subsequent yr.”
Preventing to safeguard the important essence of a music competition appears just a little pretentious. However possibly there’s one thing to it. Newport is a gem of an expertise; its appeal feels effectively value defending.
Newport wasn’t excellent. The ticket costs are means 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 particular person. However I can say that my first competition received’t be my final. Typically it’s good to be unsuitable.
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Dispatches
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Night Learn
Earlier this month, the Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil revealed 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, through the ongoing Uyghur genocide within the nation. Izgil first revealed an account of his expertise in The Atlantic in 2021, in a collection of essays titled “One by One, My Buddies Had been Despatched to the Camps.” Spend time with Izgil’s essays this weekend.
After I spoke with Izgil not too long ago, he described the e book, and his work in The Atlantic, as a technique to “increase consciousness as a lot as potential in regards to the disaster in my homeland”—but additionally to discover “what it means for a person to undergo the sorts of issues that we needed to undergo.” That private component, in addition to what his translator, Joshua L. Freeman, has known 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 revealed e book 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, will likely be moderated by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and premieres on PBS tonight at 8 p.m. ET.
P.S.
Fellow Atlantic author Tom Nichols right here, sneaking into Elaine’s appreciation of the Newport Folks Competition to make a confession: I’ve lived in and round Newport for occurring 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 Folks of us are so good (and contribute a lot to the native financial system). However 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 an enormous Navy base. So when folks come to “be current and be sort,” I growl and mutter about restaurant crowds and the site visitors bottleneck on Thames Road and the way I find it irresistible right here—in October.
The factor is, I’m additionally type of mendacity. The individuals who come right here for the music, as Elaine discovered, are pretty, and these occasions (we have now a jazz competition, too) actually do add a sparkle to a spot that’s fairly quiet a lot of the yr. So ignore my grumbling—however may you not park close to the submit workplace? I’ve some errands to run.
— Tom
Katherine Hu contributed to this article.
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