Boom Festival 2016 in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal. It is a 3-hour drive away from the capital of Lisbon. The biennial event started out last 1997 and was formerly known as the Yugoslav Music Festival. During the Summer Full Moon this coming 2016, the world will unite again for the next Boom Festival.
On a more serious note, aside from the visual and auditory feast, it is an advocacy in the truest sense of the word. While the world of music and entertainment is usually anchored by commercial success and corporate sponsorship, this festival is an exemption and an example. While others mask commercialism with advocacy, the Boom Festival is as pure in its intention from day one. Despite of its success and popularity, there is no sign of it ever embracing the temptation of profit and economic gain.
What can one expect in the Boom Festival 2016 ? The heat of the location will be filled with festive colors, music and drum beats. There are actually several stages at the Boom Music Festival. There is the Dance Temple if you love trance music. The Alchemy Circle for those who are into house music. For world and live performances one should visit the Sacred Fire. The Ambient Source is reserved for chill-out music while we also have the Groovy Beach for electronic dance music.
The Boom Festival’s main objective is to promote sustainability as well as integrate it with the culture and the arts. It is usually dubbed as Portugal’s top psytrance festival, it promotes oneness, music and culture. More than just a music festival, it is very serious about social consciousness and spiritual awareness. In fact aside from the stages for music, it also have areas for yoga sessions, lectures on massage techniques and a pool for water therapy. Environmental awareness is also one aspect the organizers wished to promote by not discouraging swimming in the lake but discouraging the use of chemicals like shampoo and soap while in it. The festival boast of its own recycling system and the use of eco-friendly toilets and waste vegetable oil powered generator system.
It is like going to a new city where you can mount your own tent.
There are a lot of water drinking stations as well as organic food stalls. Of course let us not forget environmentally sound portable toilets found in the festival ground. There are also lectures and sessions with topics ranging from drugs, depression and diet to name a few. It is a meeting of souls searching for the rhyme and reasons of life and the universe. Yes, it is a music festival, first and foremost. The unique thing about the Boom Festival is it is detached from the commercialism one can usually expect in a big festival that attracts people from all walks of life and from different countries and spiritual beliefs. Up until now, it is free from any commercial sponsors that is a source of visual pollution according to the organizers.
Years have passed since the first Boom Festival was held but it has been true to its advocacy and has upheld its guiding principles of Oneness, Peace, Creativity, Sustainability, etc. It is a gathering of free-spirited individuals trying to make the place a better one through music and soul searching. It has won YOURope Green N’ Clean Festival of the Year in the Festival Awards Europe for its innovative ways to make the festival sustainable and eco-friendly despite of the crowd that it gathers. Innovations such as free cleaning kits, pocket ashtrays and the use of solar energy and windmills.
If you are into traveling to the parts unknown, the countdown to the next big thing has started. 2016 is just but a year away, count the full moons leading to Portugal. Get your passport and plane tickets ready. Your Birkenstocks will lead you to your next travel destination. It might not just be a trip this time around, this might be your journey of a lifetime.
The next Boom Festival will be full moon August 2016.