It was a day of crowd-surfing and beer-drinking and thumping rhythms. On Sunday, August 30, a tidal wave of 35,000 concertgoers streamed into Columbia, Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavillion for the Virgin Mobile FreeFest – a free music festival that rocked from lunchtime until almost midnight.
It was the type of big-ticket affair at which it hardly surprised anyone when skydivers dropped onto the roof over the main stage to join Richard Branson, multi-billionaire founder of Virgin, as he popped the cork on a bottle of champagne high atop a sea of cheering music fans.
There was merriment and sometimes even excess. As my husband and I checked in at the gate, we were greeted by a person under the influence of something potent staggering out to gobble a handful of french fries from the muddy ground. Inside, 17 bands circulated through three stages, and rumors flew that people were waiting for hours to get into the mosh pit, ready to lose themselves in the music of Taking Back Sunday, Jet, The Bravery and Blink 182.
Somewhere between the barbeque stand and the porta-potties, revelers were reliving my childhood in a tent labeled “Shrinky Dink Art.” Nearby a woman executed an impromptu show involving about seven hula hoops to the beat of techno house from the Dance Stage.
And I myself might have – in the name of research, of course – swilled a beer larger than my head. It was a free concert, after all, and what’s more fun than something free?
Dancing to the Beat of a Different Drum
But somewhere down below the mania and the aeronautic spectacle, one could get a sense of a more serious side to the event. In the artists’ lounge, clearly tired after playing in front of thousands, Chuck D of Public Enemy reminded us that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. “The word ‘free’ … comes with work,” he said, “Free is a good start – all right, you got a free concert – but understand what’s made it free. Understand your responsibilities.”
It wasn’t quite enough, he seemed to be saying, to accept that the only cost of attending this show was the $5 each audience member was asked to donate to RE*Generation, Virgin Mobile USA’s initiative to address youth homelessness.
In fact, the festival and its huge force of volunteers and corporate partners raised about $80,000 for homeless youth charities, donated 7,000 hygiene kits and 1,000 pairs of Converse shoes to kids living on the street, and provided furniture from the artists’ lounge to homeless shelters.
But while it’s all well and good to quantify your audience or your fundraising prowess, what’s just as important, Chuck D said, is to “get the most percentage of connection to the person you’re trying to communicate to. Be sincere and honest.”
All Access for Active Youth
Up the hill listening to Weezer at the main Pavillion Stage, 18-year-old Mark Helenowski, who came from Chicago to participate in the Kyocera ALL Access film program at the festival, felt that he had already been changed by just such a connection. In the days before the festival, he and the other students on his program talked to a formerly homeless girl on a visit to DC’s Sasha Bruce Youthwork, an organization that helps homeless youth get back on their feet and one of the festival’s partners. The girl told them that many homeless kids disguise their circumstances, orchestrating an elaborate charade of normality as they bump from couch to couch or crash at shelters.
“I’ve never really interfaced with someone who had that story,” Mark said of the experience. “You always hear the phrase ‘life-changing event,’ but this really will stick with me … After that I think of it in a different way.”
Surely some of the approximately 3,000 people who donated over 30,000 hours of their time to the FreeFest’s partner organizations feel the same way as Mark. Volunteers worked at Bridge Over Troubled Waters in Boston, Green Chimneys in New York, Help USA in Philadelphia, Stand Up for Kids in Baltimore and Los Angeles and Sasha Bruce Youthwork to get priority for the free tickets.
Words of Wisdom
And those of us who sent off our little donation and didn’t think more of it? We’ve done a small thing for a good cause, which hopefully might motivate us to do other small – or big – things for this or other causes.
For Chuck D, music has the power to motive people – especially young people – to make a difference, but only if the artists and the industry take their audiences seriously. “People shouldn’t have to dumb themselves down to reach young people,” he said. “Hip hop shouldn’t have to dumb itself down or ‘young itself down’ for anything.”
He took his own advice onstage, bellowing out to the crowd in characteristic truth-telling style: “If you don’t have your own heart and your own mind, that means those spirit-snatchers are robbing you blind!” When his fans roared, he implored: “Try to be the best human being you can be.”
Catch that magic moment here:
Photos and video courtesy of Aaron Pina.
