They have something tribal, primitive, a rite of passage, an optimistic celebration of the human, which makes them irresistible. A genuine way of relating to the world and to those who inhabit it. That’s what music festivals are, that’s what they’ve always been. Because music was never a mere accompaniment of our lives: it is forever a stimulant, a reagent, an integral part of our consciences. Much more since it is accompanied by singing (the word) and dance. Whether we are aware of it or not, when we celebrate life to the rhythm of a melody, we are connecting with the most remote of our species.
We are not the only critters to whom it happens. He German ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt showed that rhythm stimulates certain physiological processes even in lower vertebrates. Also that if you sing a lullaby to someone with a fast heart rate, their heart rate drops faster than if you stay with them in silence. It is beautiful to think that this is how music was born, just like the word: in the close bond between a mother and her restless baby. Although there could be other origins, of course. The military march that unites an army, that gives him courage and makes him believe superior, invincible. The litany that indoctrinates better with music, because the lyrics excite and are remembered much more. Or the remote night of full moon in which the tribe celebrated the arrival of good weather and someone began to hit a hollow log with their hands. I don’t know if this last one was the beginning of the music, but it was the summer festivals that celebrate persistence, permanence or belonging. We are part of this, they try to tell us, we are different from others but similar to each other, and we are ready to celebrate it in a big way.
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We associate summer, since ancient times, with abundance, with satiety, with joy. Also with love and youth. That’s why in the summer songs lively rhythms and high registers abound. Anyone anywhere in the world can recognize these rhythms by pitch and cadence, regardless of language or culture. Music is —what envy— a Universal language, unifying, which does not need interpreters to be perfectly understandable. Dance is often a seduction ritual, a promise, but also a group language. It is the voice of the innate, as fascinating as it is mysterious. It causes —it has also been proven— more commotion than other artistic manifestations, such as visual ones. It generates emotional tensions that lead us to what the Greeks called catharsis, the regenerative and transforming effect of art on the recipient. The repetition of a rhythm alters our consciousness, and can even cause trance states and loss of control. And it is known that human beings —more the younger— also need these excesses. Also in that beats the ancestral, the first thing we were on the world.
So welcome once again all of it. Let’s sing, dance and feel part of something wonderful. And let’s enjoy the time abundance and joy that music makes unalterable.