Von Melissa Erhardt
6 p.m. at the Sziget Festival in Budapest. As every day, the non-binary dancer Raisha Cosima from Alicante starts her voguing workshop in front of the Mirror Stage, festival-goers covered in glitter are at the start and duckwalk back and forth laughing and in the best of moods. Meanwhile, further over on the Global Stage, a percussion session is taking place: The Hungarian Oláh Gipsy Beats combine older songs from the rural Roma and Sinti areas with popular songs from the big cities, the whole thing sounds dynamic and liberating. The Finnish rock band “The Holy” will be playing on the Europa Stage, and Ballet Camara from Senegal will soon be starting their show. Boundaries seem forgotten on Sziget, everything has its place here, nothing is mutually exclusive. That tastes a bit like lived utopia.
That Island Festival has been taking place on an island in the Danube in Budapest since 1993. Live this year: Dua Lipa, Arctic Monkeys, Kings Of Leon, Lewis Capaldi, Bastille, Jon Hopkins, Sigrid, slowthai, Little Simz, Caribou, Princess Nokia, Yung Lean, Floating Points, Honey Dijon, Alice Merton, Giant Rooks and many more
“The Island of Freedom” is written in large letters by Sziget on banners and posters, “Europe’s Woodstock” is the headline in some media regarding one of Europe’s largest music festivals. And it’s not that far away. “It feels a bit like another world. As if you would leave our world, the earth, as soon as you set foot on the site,” says one festival visitor, “we are simply free here on this island”, another, “we can drink, we can party , we can dance”. Freedom, that can also mean: partying for six days while hiding and suppressing reality, the war and the many crises that are chasing following us like in four-four time. Escapism that is good for you.
The island in two senses
“Of course we are physically on an island here,” organizer Tamas Kadar will say at the international press conference on Saturday followingnoon, “but we are also a kind of island in Hungary when we stand for freedom, when we stand for all the values that that Sziget has been what it has been since it was founded in 1993: acceptance, tolerance and togetherness in all its forms and forms.” This is not an easy undertaking, especially not in Hungary in 2022: the Hungarian state has the entire cultural industry during the pandemic, so to speak, itself left, then there was the tense economic situation: an extreme shortage of workers, which caused personnel costs to rise by around a third, inflation of around 15 percent and a simultaneous devaluation of the forint by around 15 percent – each compared to 2019. “All of this led to this year to a cost problem, which in turn led to many cuts,” argues Kadar when asked why there is so little De this year coordination at the various stages. Cuts or not, one thing was definitely not cut: the acts.
Parallel Subcultures
At Sziget, the Arctic Monkeys can be in the line-up alongside Dua Lipa, Calvin Harris, Kölsch, Slowthai or Beabadoobee and somehow everything still works out. Genres are secondary here, says Tamas: “We are not a rock festival. We’re not a pop festival. We are not an electronic music festival. We are all together.” That’s funny, because a clash of cultures is almost inevitable.
Island Festival
There are, for example, the hardcore Beliebers who only came for Justin and who don’t give a damn regarding anything else (or to quote a visitor: “I don’t care, I literally own it. I’m a Belieber, that’s my religion”), the techno freaks and raver kids, who have only geared their festival plans to DJs like Berghain veteran Ben Klock and only show up when all the dust on the site has been kicked up and the festival visitors have closed once more FFP2 masks and bandanas work – but not for fear of Corona, but to keep the amount of dirt inhaled as low as possible.
Island Festival
Then there are the indie lovers, who largely withdraw from the crowds on the main stage and sway to the grungy guitar pop of Beabadoobee or lose their cell phones and watches in mosh pits to the music of the German indie rockers Pabst. And of course there are the flexible ones who are more into the party than the music and tend to wander around aimlessly, popping in on the Calvin Harris chart show, pausing at Stromae (truly stunning live) and then finding themselves somewhere in the crowd to lose.
International Love
But it’s not just genre subgroups that crash into each other, sometimes more smoothly, sometimes a little more abruptly, the more than one hundred nationalities represented at the festival also engage in a kind of secret and unspoken battle for the best crowd.
Island Festival
While Lola Marsh covers Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are made for walking”, at least ten Israeli flags are hanging in the air from the Catalan musician Bad Gyal (who, by the way, puts on a show with so much star appeal, moments of surprise and top-notch dancing that Justin Bieber might learn a lesson from it, just saying) the Spanish-speaking community has gathered for the common Perreo, with Sevdaliza it’s a nice mishmash. “Nobody has a mixed audience like I do,” says the Dutch-Iranian musician with a grin, before she leaves her deconstructed R’n’B, which is accompanied by a dark double bass and meticulously arranged, and takes a trip into the techno realm: first carefully, then always heavier until it all ends in Gigi D’Agostino’s “L’Amour Toujour”. How do you think the Brits, who together with the Irish form the largest group on Sziget, will react to Sam Fender and the Arctic Monkeys on Monday? It’s probably going to be wild, very wild.
Hardcore Experience
Finally, it might be said: Sziget is definitely not without it. It’s a huge area where, according to festival hearsay, it hasn’t rained for over two weeks. The dust settles in the lungs following just a few hours, and the passing water cars and giant water sprinklers are of little help. Camping is not only on a separate camping area, but basically everywhere. Well, really everywhere. Some tents are just a few meters away from the stages, others are so close to the well-trodden paths that sporadic glances into the tents don’t even reveal much, everything is so dusty and gray. But well, you have to die some death. Or else, you can also ignore this by staying the night in the city. It might not be the 6-day hardcore survival experience, but your body will definitely thank you followingwards.