How (Not) to Do Music Festivals
Sun, sea, music and free spirits, man. What could go wrong?
“1000 LE and you have to bring your own toilet paper? So you're paying someone so you can to go sleep in za road?! Mish fahem ya3ni, fi eh?”
My dad's heavily accented words of wisdom echoed in my mind as I entered the the 3alGanoob Festival camp site in Marsa Allam on the Red Sea. The vibe was somehow less Woodstock and more mandatory school excursion.Then again, this was my first music festival so it's possible that I have a romanticised preconception of thousands of fancy dressed, drugged up maniacs all having sex and fist pumping. Instead, I was met with thousands of high pitched squeals from girls whose closest camping experiences comes from sitting under the stairs next to Jared's Bagels at AUC. "Ya3ni ehhh hatnaam keda 3al ard?! Eh faty dah! Let's go back to Gouna!" And then there was the shock and horror when the open air toilets were revealed to be just rubbish bins. Maybe they were trying to fool us into thinking they were actual toilets by putting a toilet seat on top of the shitting bin.
Although, in line with Burning Man's famous art installations, I guessed it must have been a Duchamp-esque dadist piece. Bravo.
I was determined to keep a free spirited mindset throughout, be one with nature and let my aura hang out. If I complained, then everyone would think I was a complete square because money is just paper, man... And toilet paper is for squares.
So I pooped in the art installation and then stumbled over a minefield of Paolo Cohelo books to get the beach where I found the DJ wearing a silly head dress. I put it on and took some drugs. Yay, look at me, I'm at a festival!
Unfortunately, the line between free spirit and drug dealer seemed to be a thin one as I was frequently approached by impressionable girls requesting narcotics "3andak aseeeeeed?"
I'm also 100% sure that doing a bunch of hallucinogenics in the desert and making drum circles won't stop mass killings and civil war in Syria or poverty in Ethiopia but as this festival was about peace and love, I did my best to not be judgmental and danced into the 60-strong drum circle wearing a giant giraffe mask. You know, for the kids, man.
I then met crazy Ahmed, a bartender and part time philosopher, who decided to psychoanalyse me every time I went for a refreshment or bite to eat.
“You know, you can’t keep going around brainwashed as if you know everything.” He then begins to quote "Plato" in Arabic – “El 7ekma el ha2eya inak tb2a 3aref inak mish 3aref haga” (The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing). For starters, that was Socrates and all I knew was that I wanted a Sprite. He continued to fuck with everyone else who dared go to the bar too. Alas, the over-priced soft-drinks were hitting my pocket hard, so that was the last time crazy Ahmed and I spoke.
It occurred to me at some point that this was a music festival and so far 90% of my time had been spent either walking or figuring out how to poop. As such I headed to the main stage (the only stage) to check out the talent. What I saw was a woman with an accordion screaming about her red dabdoob for half an hour followed by five to six carbon copy Egyptian Indie Pop/Oriental bands, singing repetitive hooks about fruit over overused 90s Rock riffs. This was followed by another anticipated performance being cancelled as the band's sound check was earlier interrupted because the music was too loud for the people doing Yoga... at the music festival. It ain't a music festival without someone getting bottled on stage but I did my best to restrain myself. I mean, at the end of the day, this is what I knew I was paying for. No, wait hold on, the artists weren't even getting paid. In fact, I didn't know who was getting paid.
Volunteers were doing most of the work, tricked into a holiday with the promise of free accommodation and entrance. What they ended up getting was a shit load of slave-like manual labour, from putting up tents to cleaning the shit and then eventually got kicked out of their own accommodation to leave space for more paying guests. The only things we didn’t have to pay for were our rations of boiled eggs and foul in the morning and the tents which were most likely rented on mass by the organisers and felt more like greenhouses when waking up in the sweltering heat. Oh, and they were eventually were blown away by a sand storm on the last day.
All in all, the festival must have raked in more than a few hundred thousand pounds with seemingly little to no costs; more than any of these glam, raucous affairs with international DJs on hotel rooftops do.This festival of love and peace and hippiedom capitalised on a vague subjective collective idea of free-thinking, of hipster-ness, and milked it for all it’s worth (much like Coelho in fact). But then again, I can’t complain, that wouldn’t be very cool of me.
Hold your groans before you call me a complete cynic, though. It is absolutely fantastic that a music festival of this kind could be held in Egypt. All I'm saying is, let's not put down a rubbish bin and call it a toilet.
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