Boom Festival

Last updated
Boom Festival
Boom Festival-Logo Symbol-Black.svg
Boom Festival logo
Dance Temple-Boom 2012.jpg
People dancing at the Dance Temple, Boom Festival 2012
Genre Transformational festival, Psychedelic, Psytrance, Arts, Culture, Visionary art, Psytechno, World Music, Downtempo, Electronica, Chill-Out
Date(s)Full Moon (July or August) and New Moon of July 2022
Frequency Biennial
Location(s)Boomland, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal
Years active1997 – present
Website www.boomfestival.org

The Boom Festival is a biennial transformational, multidisciplinary, psychedelic and sustainable festival that happens every two years in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal. Editions are in sync with the full moon. The only exception being Boom 2023 which is also the first ever consecutive edition, taking place during waxing crescent moon and with the theme "Radical Love".

Contents

Lake view of Boom Festival 2014 Boom Festival 2014 - photo by Joao Curiti.jpg
Lake view of Boom Festival 2014

Born in 1997 in Herdade do Zambujal, Águas de Moura, Portugal  as a goa trance psychedelic party, it has since then evolved into a global celebration of alternative culture.

Today, Boom is a festival that gathers people from all around the globe (in 2018, 147 countries were represented) that resonate with the mantra words of the festival such as Oneness, Music, Peace, Arts, Environment, Culture and Love. It is a 100% independent festival. It is renowned as a leading example of sustainability oriented festival.

Boom’s Environmental Paradigm has gained a reputation for its hand-on, fusionist, experimental approach for large scale gatherings. It is based on the following dimensions: art and creativity; water; air; soil; waste as a resource; public health; food and nutrition; engagement and social change; energy, mobility and transport; packaging; procurement and materials. The festival has won several green festival international awards since 2008. [1]

Over the course of two decades, the festival has honoured themes such as Water (2010); Alchemy (2012); The Feminine (2014); Shamanism (2016) and Sacred Geometry in 2018.

The 13th edition of Boom Festival took place on 22 July - 29 July 2022 with The Anthropocene as its main theme, after being rescheduled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

History

Open space. Boom Festival-2006-img 1170 (1936932925).jpg
Open space.
The beach on the banks of Marechal Carmona Dam reservoir. Boom Festival-2006-img 1189 (1937804516).jpg
The beach on the banks of Marechal Carmona Dam reservoir.

The festival was born out of a group of friends who wanted to bring the vibe of the Goa parties to Portugal. They introduced the psychedelic movement in Portugal in the early 1990s, with regular parties in a forest and in 1997 decided to organise a festival which would bring together the Goa trancers from across the world. Thus giving birth to Boom’s first edition in August 1997.

Boom’s second edition took place in 1998, and from then on the festival started taking place every two years. Each edition helped steer the festival towards new concepts within psychedelic music and culture.

The last edition of the festival in the now-mythical forest of Herdade do Zambujal was in 2000. It was a life-changing moment not only for the festival with the introduction of new areas such a brand new conference area, new music areas, to name just a few. It also marked the arrival of a whole new generation to the global psychedelic scene that converged to Portugal to celebrate Boom.

In 2002 the festival moved to the shores of the Idanha-a-Nova lake. Between 2002 and 2008, the festival started to develop not only a multidisciplinary vision of the psychedelic trance culture and beyond, but it also pioneered multiple sustainability and regeneration projects.

In 2010 the festival moved to another homestead, located on the other shore side of the Idanha-a-Nova lake, allowing the festival to further develop conceptually and to launch the Boomland project: a permanent space for regeneration, inspired in free and independent cultural spaces, and which hosts sustainable events that aim at human transformation.

The Boom Festival 20 Years documentary (1997–2017) film sums up its origins, 11 editions of the festival and all the projects which emerged from its evolution over time. This documentary contains rare footage of both Boom and the worldwide psychedelic movement.

Vision

Psychedelic for Boom means “to think outside the box”. Psychedelic means mind manifesting but has been associated as an attribute for music, arts in general and alternative ways of life. Boom’s perspective on psychedelia is that every single individual is essentially free. Free to think, to act, to create, and to respect one another. It is awakening a holistic awareness that all beings share the same pulse of life, that they are part of an interconnected Universe. Boom does not believe in the psychedelic orthodoxy that advocates being boxed into one style of music, one lifestyle, or one philosophy. Boom also does not resonate with the narrative that psychedelic consciousness means intoxication. To be free is to be aware, is to challenge the limits, is to think outside the box and not to submit to the dominant culture. [2]

Culture and Art Program

Dance Temple [3]

Where the rich musical lineage of Psychedelic Trance is celebrated.

Alchemy Circle [4]

Deep, hypnotic sounds and electronic music. Not an alternative floor, but rather another place of psychedelic music expression.

The Gardens [5] (formerly known as the Chill Out Gardens) Chill Out music in all its forms provides the slo-mo soundtrack, both synthesised and hand-made, to this area. The surrounding hubs enhance this experience through workshops and therapies.

Sacred Fire [6]

World music and hands-on workshops embedded into organic architecture and landscaping.

Being Fields [7]

This is a nexus for countless Boomers to enjoy 20 hours of practice each day, including yoga, meditation, sound healing, shamanic rituals, oriental practice, alternative medicine and more.

Liminal Village [8]

Cultural hub featuring talks, discussion panels, Q&A’s, workshops, and night-time cinema program under the name “Paradigm Films”. [9]

NGO Dome [10]

NGOs, collectives and individuals: underdogs of social change take to the stage with empowering eco-tech tools and projects.

Nataraj Dance Stage [11]

Nata (dance) and Raja (king) is the Sanskrit reference to Hindu god Shiva. Experience rhythmic workshops by day and a program of contemporary dance performances by night.

Young Dragons [12]

Interactive playgrounds, workshops, performance art, cinema and theatre for the younger generation of Boomers and their families. A space in nature dedicated to children and youngsters aged 3 to 12.

Art Installations [13]

Boomland is an open-air art gallery. Open air art and Boom's sustainability ethos form a symbiosis to educate participants in the most aesthetic way.

Performances [14]

Performances at Boom happen all across the venue. In 2021, the program features immersive interventions, circus, dance and artistic residencies.

Bike Village [15]

A meeting place, repair and workshop hub for bikers and bicycle enthusiasts.

Fine Art Galleries [16]

A brand new concept for displaying visual arts across Boomland in 2021. Visionary art itself has been one of the core components of the festival since 2002, and Boom has contributed to its dissemination in festival culture. Following this era, the festival now explores the connection between art and its relation to the sacred and the Anthropocene, entering a new phase showcasing fine arts at Boom.

Social Hubs [17]

Cozy social areas equipped with community kitchens, first aid points, helpful stewards and activities for children and adults alike.

Participation [18]

Boom is a reflection of its own participants. As a highly collaborative experience, it resonates with the principle of co-creation, to allow for a maximum of artistic freedom and expression. For this reason, the festival encourages anyone who wishes to contribute to apply via the official website.

Social & Environmental Program

Boom intervenes in the following dimensions: Art & Creativity; Water; Soil; Air; Waste as a Resource; Procurement & Materials; Public Health; Food & Nutrition; Engagement & Social Change; Mobility & Transport; Energy; Packaging.

Awards

In 2004, Boom began a series of environmentally self-sustainable projects, which include: toilets that don't use chemical products, the treatment of residual waters using biotechnology, utilisation of wind and solar energy, recycling and the free supply of cleaning kits to participants (including pocket ashtrays and rubbish bags). [19] It has been assessed and awarded with the Outstanding Greener Festival Award in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.

In 2011, it won, for the second year in a row, the YOUROPE prize/Green 'N' Clean Festival of the Year in the Festival Awards Europe. [20] As a result, the United Nations invited the organizing team to use the popularity of music as a means for raising public environmental awareness in a program called United Nations Music & Environmental Initiative (M&E). [21]

Awards:

Boomland Project

Boom has been taking place on Herdade da Granja since 2010. In 2016, the organisation launched a crowdfunding campaign to acquire the land, ultimately leading to its purchase on 28 September 2016. The land is managed by IdanhaCulta, a non-profit organisation with several associates, one of which is Good Mood (the organiser of Boom Festival).

See also

Related Research Articles

Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from EBM in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and quickly spread throughout Europe.

Psychedelic trance, psytrance, or psy is a subgenre of trance music characterized by arrangements of rhythms and layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. The genre offers variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full on, darkpsy, forest, minimal (Zenonesque), hitech psy, progressive, suomi, psy-chill, psycore, psybient, psybreaks, or "adapted" tracks from other music genres. Goa trance preceded psytrance; when digital media became more commonly used psytrance evolved. Goa continues to develop alongside the other genres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Metzner</span> German-American psychologist, psychotherapist, and researcher (1936–2019)

Ralph Metzner was a German-born American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president.

Electronic dance music (EDM) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. Since its inception EDM has expanded to include a wide range of subgenres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Idanha-a-Nova</span> Municipality in Centro, Portugal

Idanha-a-Nova is a town and surrounding municipality in the district of Castelo Branco, in east-central Portugal. A border municipality with Spain, the population of the municipality in 2011 was 9,716, in an area of 1416.34 km2, making it one of the largest and least densely populated municipalities in Portugal as well as the first Portuguese municipality by population ageing. King Alfonso II (1211-1223) confirmed its charter in 1219 renaming the village with the current place names (Idanha-a-Nova) to distinguish it from the old Idanha, 18 kilometers away. The municipal holiday is the Monday 15 days after Easter. The incumbent mayor is Armindo Moreira Palma Jacinto, representing the Socialist Party.

Ultra Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doof</span> Outdoor dance party

A doof or bush doof is a type of outdoor dance party generally held in a remote country area, or outside a large city in surrounding bush or rainforest. Events referred to as doofs are now held worldwide and have built from a small set of social groups to a subculture with millions of active members worldwide, considered by some as a full blown culture similar to raves or teknivals. Doofs generally have healing workshops, speakers, art, live artists and DJs playing a range of electronic music, commonly goa, house, dub techno, Techno, acid heavy sounds and psychedelic trance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CTM Festival</span>

The annual CTM Festival is a music and visual arts event held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1999, the festival originally focused on electronic music, but has since evolved to cover a wide range of genres under the banner "Festival for Adventurous Music and Art".

Peats Ridge Festival was an Australian sustainable arts and music festival, held in Glenworth Valley, Peats Ridge, one hour's drive north of Sydney and a 90-minute drive from Newcastle, New South Wales. Established in 2004, one year after the death of the founder of the Glenworth Valley Horse Riding facility, the Festival was recognised as one of the world's leading sustainability events. It ran for three days around New Year's Eve, from 29 December to 1 January. The event organisers relied heavily on volunteer support, and volunteer service was rewarded with a free ticket. That type of employment strategy was one of many of the sustainable options chosen by the organisers of the festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ozora Festival</span> Hungarian arts festival

The Ozora Festival, stylised as O.Z.O.R.A., is an annual transformational festival and arts festival near the Hungarian village of Ozora.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OM Festival</span> Canadian electronic music festival

The OM Festival was a community-based summer solstice festival that ran annually in southern Ontario from 1998 to 2004. The festival, organized by Sumkidz, primarily featured electronic music as well as dance, workshops, art, and other forms of acoustic music. It encouraged its attendees to participate by volunteering and promoted free expression and a no-spectator, leave-no-trace philosophy. At its peak, Om drew in just over 3000 participants from all over the world.

A transformational festival is a counterculture festival that espouses a community-building ethic, and a value system that celebrates life, personal growth, social responsibility, healthy living, and creative expression. Transformational alludes both to personal transformation (self-realization) and steering the transformation of culture toward sustainability. Some transformational festivals resemble music festivals, but are distinguished by such features as seminars, classes, drum circles, ceremonies, installation art, the availability of whole food and bodywork, and a Leave No Trace policy. Transformational festivals are held outdoors, often in remote locations, and are co-created by the participants. The events are psychedelic inspired, involving visionary art, speakers on topics of entheogenic substances, as well as audio and visual entertainment intended to amplify psychedelic experiences.

Symbiosis Gathering is an expressive arts, music, and community event based on transformational development, notable for its international festival collaborations and lack of corporate sponsorship.

Perfect Stranger is the stage name of Yuli Fershtat, an Israeli musician, producer and DJ, born in 1970 in Moscow, Russia, moving to Israel at the age of 11.

Neon Festival is a biennial music festival held in Turkey. The festival began in the 4th biggest city of Turkey, called Bursa in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boomtown (festival)</span> Immersive music festival near Winchester, England

Boomtown is a British music festival held annually on the Matterley Estate in South Downs National Park, near Winchester, Hampshire. It was first held in 2009 and has been held at its current site since 2011. Its diverse line-up of bands, DJs and speakers perform on many different stages each a part of a district with its own individual theme. Each yearly event is known as a Chapter and expands on the story line from the previous year, told through the sets, live actors and many forms of alternate reality games. The festival site is split into several districts, and the narrative is reflected in the design of the districts, streets and venues, which are populated by hundreds of actors to play the role of inhabitants. The large scale of the sets and infrastructure require six weeks of construction, and a month of disassembly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loud (electronic music act)</span>

LOUD are a psytrance / electronica / psychedelic music group consisting of Kobi Toledano and Eitan Reiter, both from Haifa, Israel. LOUD have been called "one of the hottest and most interesting groups in the world trance scene today."

Wonderfruit is an annual gathering for art, culture, music, and nature at The Fields at Siam Country Club, outside Pattaya in Chonburi Province, Thailand. The event features a farm, musical performances, art and architectural installations, talks, workshops, wellness activities, and feasts. The event was launched in December 2014, produced by Thai-based production company Scratch First; the second iteration expanded from three to four days and took place a year later. Wonderfruit 2016 was originally scheduled for 15–18 December 2016. Due to a period of mourning in Thailand following the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, however, it was postponed to 16–19 February 2017. Wonderfruit returned later that year for its fourth iteration in its usual winter position over 14 to 17 December 2017. December 2018 saw the event move a kilometre east of the original site, to a larger, more topographically diverse space; the fifth edition took place from 13 to 16 December 2018. The sixth edition of Wonderfruit was staged from 12 to 16 December 2019, with a program stretching from midday Thursday 12 December to the afternoon of Monday 16 December, effectively spanning 99 hours without breaks. The festival announced it would return for its seventh year from 10 to 14 December 2020, before announcing a 12-month postponement to an undisclosed date in December 2021 due to travel restrictions and social distancing measures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand. In lieu of a full gathering due to border closures, Wonderfruit created a smaller, localised event targeting domestic audiences in Thailand: Moobaan Wonder. The revised event was scheduled to be held across five weekends in December 2020 and January 2021, but ultimately ended after just two weekends following a resurgence of COVID-19 inside the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Narthaki Nataraj</span> Indian Bharatanatyam dancer

Narthaki Nataraj is an Indian trans woman Bharatanatyam dancer. In 2019, she was awarded the Padma Shri, making her the first transgender woman to be awarded India's fourth-highest civilian award.

References

  1. felipe, luis (2019-02-06). "Boom Festival honoured with sustainability award" . Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  2. "Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
  3. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Dance Temple - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  4. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Alchemy Circle - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  5. Team, Boom Festival Web. "The Gardens (former Chill Out Gardens) - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  6. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Sacred Fire - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  7. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Being Fields - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  8. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Nataraj Dance Stage - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  9. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Liminal Village - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  10. Team, Boom Festival Web. "NGO Dome - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  11. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Nataraj Dance Stage - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  12. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Young Dragons - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  13. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Art Installations - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  14. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Performances - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  15. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Bike Village - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  16. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Fine Arts Galleries - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  17. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Social Hubs - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  18. Team, Boom Festival Web. "Participate - Boom Festival 2022". boomfestival.org. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  19. "LETTER FROM THE BOOMERS". A Greener Festival. 2010-09-17. Retrieved 2022-02-09.
  20. AEIOU - Investimentos Multimédia, S.A. (2011-01-13). "Boom Festival ganha prémio Green 'N' Clean nos Festival Awards Europe". Blitz.aeiou.pt. Archived from the original on 2012-03-09. Retrieved 2013-12-31.
  21. BOOM FESTIVAL INVITED BY THE UN Archived August 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  22. "Previous Winners". A Greener Festival. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  23. "International AGF Awards". A Greener Festival. Retrieved 2022-02-08.
  24. "Idanha-a-Nova - UCCN Report" (PDF).