Boom Festival

In the modern music scene, a lot of festivals have fallen into the fold of the capitalist machine. Happening every year in the same location with mostly the same lineup and attracting the same crowd.

The counterculture ideas upon which the festival movement was built are gone in so many places, but they are still alive and well today at Boom. This event embodies everything mainstream society is not, and thus offers a pure and authentic escape.

The first Boom came together in 1997 in Herdade do Zambujal, Águas de Moura, Portugal, and beginning in 1998, the event has only been produced every two years, placing quality over quantity. Production over profit.

2022 will be the first time Boom has waited four years in between events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, taking place July 22-29 at Idanha-a-Nova lake in Portugal, in line with the new moon.

Musically, Boom started out as a psytrance festival, and that trend continues today. Within the internationally revered Dance Temple, thunderous beats will be playing day and night from some of the genre's most prolific names like Liquid Soul and Ace Ventura.

In 2018 there were 12 DJ sets, 51 live sets, and four live bands at the Dance Temple, so attendees can expect the full range of trance expression here. Attendees can enjoy the raging techno of Rødhåd and the precise electronics of Pantha Du Prince in the Alchemy Circle.

Boom is far from just a music festival, though. Its new theme of Anthropocene—which alludes to the current geological age in which human action has the strongest effect on the planet—the event aims to educate attendees into how they can live harmoniously with the world around them.

There will be over 206 hours of talks at the Liminal Village on a plethora of topics such as sustainability, mindfulness, and physicality. Prominent organizations within these spheres such as Sea-Watch, Queer Art Lab, and Climate Fresk will also participate, providing information to attendees to take home after Boom concludes.

One of Boom’s many goals is to unite the world in the values it promotes, and in that regard they have seen success. Over 184 countries were represented in 2018, and even if it is the exact same crowd returning to the same location (Boom’s been in Idanha-a-Nova lake since 2010), they will be different people at heart.

They will have seen what happened to mainstream society throughout the pandemic, and there will be a newfound passion to realign.