Music festivals have an extraordinary power to unite people – emotionally and physically, because when you’re crammed up against a wall of stranger’s bodies, you’ve just got to go with the flow. Others have unity in despair at missing out on tickets, or take action and storm the fences. For some artists, however, the stage is a platform not only for their music, but their messages about social issues.
Over the weekend, at Lollapalooza in Chicago, many of the performers opened their acts with a speech to the enormous crowds. Mass shootings took place in Texas and Ohio at the same time as artists like Twenty One Pilots and Ariana Grande prepared to take to the stage, inspiring country singer Kacey Musgraves to break up her set with a call to politicians to take action on gun control.
She pleaded with her enraptured audience to contact their representatives, driving home the point by rousing a chant of “Somebody f*cking do something!”
The Revivalists chose to make a similar statement, using a giant banner reading “End Gun Violence Now” as the backdrop for their performance, which featured an anti-gun violence protest song released late last year. Lead singer David Shaw used slightly subtler phrasing than Musgraves, saying, “We’ve got a problem in this country and I think you know what it is. … It’s up to the young people in this nation to speak out.”
Janelle Monae used her slot earlier in the Lollapalooza lineup to hit home some particularly provocative social and political messages. As well as performing her fiercely feminist songs ‘Django Jane’ and ‘Pynk’, she had some words for anyone who didn’t get the subtext. “We’re fighting against the abuse of power,” she said, “We’re fighting to get Donald Trump impeached.”
And it’s not just Lollapalooza that features this kind of expression. The history of political speech at music festivals is as long as they’ve been around, and an increasing number of artists are choosing to use them as an opportunity to protest and inspire.
At this year’s Glastonbury festival, Lizzo passionately encouraging her audience to take on a self-love mantra, and Olly Alexander of Years and Years defended himself against haters by drawing attention to the history and future of the LGBT+ community.
“The fight for equality began before the Stonewall riots, it continues today and it will go on until tomorrow, into the future,” he said, “But the future is not fixed. And our histories cannot predict what tomorrow might bring or what we might do with it.”