“But in 2019, it rained straight for three days on the opposite side of the Nile, and on our side, just 200 meters away, we stayed dry.”įor many festivals, of course, neither rainmakers nor changing locations are feasible options. “I can’t vouch for the science behind it,” Dilsizian acknowledges. They are traditional fixtures at Ugandan events, ranging from weddings to political rallies. Nyege Nyege Festival also employs various “rainmakers”-that is, shamans who, contrary to their name, specialize in keeping the clouds at bay. “If it rains, we’re much better prepared now, and everyone can rush off to their hotel,” adds Dilsizian. Last year, a month of rain leading up to the festival turned access roads into mud pits, exacerbating the already difficult logistics of the site’s remote forest location. In the 12 years he’s lived in the country, the Greek-Armenian musicologist has seen Uganda’s wet and dry seasons become increasingly erratic. “Global warming is dramatically affecting different parts of the world in different ways,” says Arlen Dilsizian, co-founder of Nyege Nyege. Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival changed its dates from September to November, to be closer to the beginning of the dry season, and is shifting to an outdoor space within Jinja, a town on the shore of Lake Victoria, at the source of the Nile. Had we been a week earlier, our inaugural year of the festival would have been canceled, and I’m not entirely sure that you survive that.” “We had fences going over, structures being blown. “That was scary,” says We Out Here’s Joe Barnett. While stages were going up in advance of opening day, high winds forced the closure of multiple events in the region. We Out Here, a fledgling festival in the UK countryside, had a close call in 2019, its very first year. Meanwhile, South Korea’s World Scout Jamboree suffered a heat wave that sickened hundreds, followed by a typhoon that forced its evacuation. British Columbia’s Under the Stars was halted and evacuated last month after wildfires flared up nearby. In Australia, heavy rains stoked by La Niña, a periodic weather phenomenon that climatologists say is exacerbated by ocean warming, recently forced the cancellation of more than a dozen music festivals. Unexpected rains turned Burning Man’s Mad Max desert cosplay into a mud-caked hellscape that forced the cancellation of events and the closure of roads (even Diplo and Chris Rock had to hitch a ride home). This summer alone, Primavera Sound Madrid, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, German metal festival Wacken Open Air, Scottish folk festival Tiree, Michigan rave Electric Forest, and our own Pitchfork Music Festival were either paused, preempted, or aborted due to inclement weather. The Red Rocks debacle was a particularly dramatic example of how extreme weather is wreaking havoc on outdoor events.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |