Wade Payne/Invision, via Associated Press Paul McCartney performing at the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn., on June 14.This week: The 12th Bonnaroo music festival, which wrapped up last Sunday in Manchester, Tenn.
Bonnaroo has held steady since 2002 as one of America’s largest music festivals; it sells out most years at 80,000. It has not expanded into double weekends and boat cruises, like Coachella, or sprouted versions in other countries, like Lollapalooza. But the look of its lineup has changed since its early days as a jam-band summit, the festival at which you were assured of hearing msic descending from the Grateful Dead. And it has changed not so much toward a package of sellable indie cool for college kids, which is the big-festival norm (i.e., favorites from the last few editions of South by Southwest, plus a few platinum-selling headliners to insure ticket sales), but toward a kind of broad and principled omnivorousness. Aside from its headliners â€" Paul McCartney, Jack Johnson, Tom Petty â€" this year’s Bonnaroo had a slate of West African music, progressive bluegrass, new hip-hop, old R&B, southern metal, and a memorable set of Swans’ symphonic negativity. So: what is the current center of Bonnaroo’s identity? Or to ask the question a different way: what kind of music wouldn’t work at Bonnaroo? Jon Caramanica debriefs Ben Ratliff, who reviewed the festival this year for The Times.
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Ben Ratliff’s review of Bonnaroo 2013.
