Michigan is home to a number of nationally renowned music festivals but one of the largest, and perhaps the most colorful, is the Electric Forest Festival.
This past weekend, thousands of music lovers from across the country converged at the Double JJ Resort in Rothbury, Michigan to see over a hundred bands and artists.
While most of the music was electronic dance music, a diversity of music genres were represented in the lineup. There were jam bands, rappers, world musicians, DJs, and even two marching bands.
The festival ran Thursday through Sunday with performances going late into the night. During the day, attendees could attend yoga classes held at one of the main stages, catch drum and hula hoop workshops, or hang out in the Sherwood Forest (see video below):
*Vine taken from Electric Forest's official Twitter page
Each day, jam bands would begin to play at the main stages early in the afternoon. But it was at night that the forest was most alive. The thumping bass of dub step (a type of electronic dance music, see a previous post to learn more) and the fantastic light shows made the festival an otherworldly experience.
For those there to hear electronic music, highlights included Pretty Lights, Noisia, Baauer (of the infamously viral, Harlem Shake), and Krewella.
The indie rock group, Passion Pit, and an electronic music duo, Empire of the Sun, both treated audiences to loud and upbeat performances with extravagant light shows.
Other favorites included the Nigerian musicians Femi Kuti and the Positive Force, the indie rockers Dispatch, and the funk band, Lettuce.
A festival staple is the String Cheese Incident – a jam band that sometimes plays bluegrass, rock, jazz, and electronic music in the same song. The band performed four-hour long sets on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.
Monday morning meant a reluctant return to reality. The extravagant costumes were packed away with the tents and camping gear as festival-goers left Sherwood Forest to reenter the real world.
According to Michelle Anderson at MLive, the festival drew in 25,000 attendees.
This was Electric Forest’s third year and it seems to have found a permanent home in Rothbury.
-Julia Field, Michigan Radio Newsroom
