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britomart · 2 years

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ok helloo i wasn’t sure if i was going to post this but i listed them out anyway so here it is,,,, more or less every book i read in 2021 (under the cut for ridiculous length)

a study in scarlet by arthur conan doyle, slouching towards bethlehem, the miniaturist by jessie burton, the stranger by albert camus, dirk gently’s holistic detective agency by douglas adams, the double by fyodor dostoevsky, the kite runner by khaled hosseini, the empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo, one day in the life of ivan denisovich by aleksandr solzhenitsyn, rhubaiyat of omar khayyam, say nothing by patrick radden keefe, the martian by andy weir, my sister the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite, the last wish by andrzej spakowski, the martian by andy weir, flowers for algernon by daniel keyes, night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong, the sailor who fell with grace from the sea by yukio mishima, the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman, the adventures of sherlock holmes by arthur conan doyle, crush by richard siken, stoner by john williams, the buried giant by kazuo ishiguro, frog and toad are friends by arnold lobel, ruin and rising by leigh bardugo, the perks of being a wallflower by stephen chbosky, the communist manifesto by marx and engels, never let me go by kazuo ishiguro, always human by ari north, heartstopper by alice oseman, red white and royal blue by casey mcquiston, perceval by chretien de troyes, these witches don’t burn by isabel sterling, princess princess ever after by kay o’neill, lord of the flies by william golding, legendborn by tracy deonn, the lais of marie de france, diary of a cricket god by shamini flint, if not winter: fragments of sappho translated by anne carson, bloom by kevin panetta, kiki’s delivery service by eiko kadono, something to talk about by meryl wilsner, normal people by sally rooney, useless magic by florence welch, giovanni’s room by james baldwin, letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke, interior chinatown by charles yu, the umbrella academy by gerard way, king artus translated by curt leviant, solitaire by alice oseman, the tea dragon society by kay o’neill, let all the children boogie by sam j. miller, sir gawain and the green knight (various translations), dutch romances iii: five interpolated romances from the lancelot compilation, morien translated by jessie weston, watchmen by alan moore, growing up aboriginal in australia edited by anita heiss, the borrowed by chan ho-kei, the tale of two lovers by aeneas sylvius piccolomini, love in the time of cholera by gabriel garcia marquez, the complete poems of william blake, the catcher in the rye by j.d. salinger, the waves by virginia woolf, the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne, oscar wilde and a death of no importance by gyles brandreth, a portrait of the artist as a young man by james joyce, the wind in the willows by kenneth grahame, odes to common things by pablo neruda, the promised neverland by kaiu shirai, fifth sun by camilla townsend, the poetry of pablo neruda, are you listening? by tillie walden, if beale street could talk by james baldwin, the color purple by alice walker, this one summer by mariko tamaki, a certain hunger by chelsea g. summers, the years by virginia woolf, lore olympus by rachel smythe, the mysterious affair at styles by agatha christie, le lai de lanval by marie de france, murder on the links by agatha christie, mary ventura and the ninth kingdom by sylvia plath, the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera, the last unicorn by peter s. beagle, post-laureate idyls by oscar fay adams, complete poems and selected letters of john keats, if they come for us by fatimah asghar, white tears/brown scars by ruby hamad, thousand cranes by yasunari kawabata, sonnets from the portuguese by elizabeth barrett browing, simon vs the homo sapiens agenda, in the blood by melbourne tapper, kairo-ko by natsume soseki, the arthurian handbook by norris j. lacy, passing by nella larsen, minor feelings by cathy park hong, carol by patricia highsmith, jews dont count by david baddiel, picnic at hanging rock by joan lindsay, black cats and four leaf clovers by harry oliver, because the internet by gretchen mcculloch, strangers on a train by patricia highsmith, wolf children by mamoru hosoda, richard iii by william shakespeare, 2001: a space odyssey by arthur c. clarke, the time machine by h.g. wells, gone with the wind by margaret mitchell, norse mythology by neil gaiman, howl’s moving castle by diane wynne jones, ziggy stardust and me by james brandon, the boy the mole the fox and the horse by charlie murray, the secret world of arriety by hiromasa yonebayashi, loveless by alice oseman, mrs dalloway by virginia woolf, the crucible by arthur miller, the day of the triffids by john wyndham, where angels fear to tread by e.m. forster, lancelot and the lord of the distant isles by patricia terry, summer of salt by katrina leno, go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin, pride and prejudice by janes austen, the rise and fall of the dinosaurs by steve brusatte, the bell jar by sylvia plath, the little prince by antoine de saint-exupery, oliver twist by charles dickens, the song remains the same by andrew ford and anni heino, the post office girl by stefan zweig, moll flanders by daniel defoe, a room with a view by e.m. forster, of mice and men by john steinbeck, rita hayworth and the shawshank redemption by stephen king, willow by mariko tamaki, at the clinic by sally rooney, fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom, an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishiguro, close range by annie proulx, fear by stefan zweig, much ado about nothing by william shakespeare, call me by your name by andre aciman, six of crows by leigh bardugo, clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo, the joy luck club by amy tan, between the acts by virginia woolf, the narrative of john smith by arthur conan doyle, we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver, the way of the househusband by kousuke oono, the fourteenth letter by claire evans, selected stories by stefan zweig, nick and charlie by alice oseman, the fellowship of the ring by j.r.r. tolkien, the humans by matt haig, no one is talking about this by patricia lockwood, the age of innocence by edith wharton, on a sunbeam by tillie walden, my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh, wonder by r.j. palacio, reasons to stay alive by matt haig, the well of loneliness by radclyffe hall, how to do nothing by jenny odell, the charioteer by mary renault, the henna wars by adiba jaigirdar, darkness at noon by arthur koestler, a wizard of earthsea by ursula k. le guin, the story of galahad by mary blackwell sterling, the tombs of atuan by ursula k le guin, david copperfield by charles dickens, such a fun age by kiley reid, lancelot by giles kristian, carry on by rainbow rowell, scoop by evelyn waugh, the story of hong gildong, a handful of dust by evelyn waugh, a little life by hanya yanagihara, the necessary arthur by garth nix, the arthurian legends by richard barber, romeo and juliet by william shakespeare, stamped from the beginning by ibram x kendi, when breath becomes air by paul kalanthi, the fire never goes out by noelle stevenson, kafka on the shore by haruki murakami, kokoro by natsume soseki, delayed rays of a star by amanda lee koe, radio silence by alice oseman, by gaslight by steven price, perfect little world by kevin wilson, wayward son by rainbow rowell, blind willow sleeping woman by haruki murakami, hani and ishu’s guide to fake dating by adiba jaigirdar, taproot by keezy young, ready player one by ernest cline, the gentleman’s guide to vice and virtue by mackenzi lee, le morte d’arthur by thomas malory, nocturnes by kazuo ishiguro, lucky’s by andrew pippos, the magic fish by trung le nguyen, swimming in the dark by tomasz jedrowski, love by roddy doyle, only mostly devastated by sophie gonzales, i was born for this by alice oseman, the invisible man by h.g. wells, spinning by tillie walden, the three musketeers by alexandre dumas, all quiet on the western front by erich maria remarque, perfect on paper by sophie gonzales, parsnips buttered by joe lycett, we were liars by e. lockart, the farthest shore by ursula k. le guin, convenience store woman by sayaka murata, arsene lupin by maurice leblanc, scott pilgrim by bryan lee o’malley, miss carter’s war by sheila hancock, selected letters of virginia woolf, the prophet by kahlil gibran, siddhartha by herman hesse, less by andrew sean greer, reservoir dogs screenplay by quentin tarantino, peta lyre’s rating normal by anna whateley, the hound of the baskerville by arthur conan doyle, inherit the wind by jerome lawrence and robert e lee, the nine cloud dream by kim man-jung, trainspotting by irvine welsh, withnail and i screenplay by bruce robinson, america is in the heart by carlos bulosan, beach read by emily henry, steppenwolf by herman hesse, balzac and the little chinese seamstress by dai sijie, true history of the kelly gang by peter carey, one last stop by casey mcquiston, speaker for the dead by orson scott card, klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro, the eye of the world by robert jordan, the autobiography of malcolm x as told by alex haley, the two towers by j.r.r tolkien, arsene lupin vs herlock sholmes by maurice leblanc, layamon’s arthur, all systems red by martha wells, mucha by patrick bade, macbeth by shakespeare, perfume by patrick suskind, the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck, collisions: a liminal anthology, the hours by michael cunningham, growing up disabled in australia edited by carly findlay, the betrayals by bridget collins, live and let die by ian fleming, crazy rich asians by kevin kwan, good omens by terry pratchett and neil gaiman, this train is being held by ismee williams, the shape of water by andrea camilleri, the war in the air by h.g. wells, the end of men by christina sweeney-baird, the terracotta dog by andrew camilleri, the moon and sixpence by w somerset maugham, girl woman other by bernadine evaristo, ace of spades by faridah abike-iyimide, sir launfal by thomas chestre, androcles and the lion by bernard shaw, absalom absalom! by william faulkner, crooked kingdom by leigh bardugo, one of us is lying by karen m mcmanus, honeybee by craig silvey, anywhere but earth edited by keith stevenson, first love and other stories by ivan turgenev, no country for old men by cormac mccarthy, annihilation by jeff vandermeer, the road by cormac mccarthy, the duel by aleksandr kuprin, the awakening by kate chopin, the fall by albert camus, a new day yesterday by mike barnes, mort by terry pratchett, view with a grain of sand by wislawa szymborska, no exit and other plays by jean-paul satre, the godfather by mario puzo, tomorrow when the war began by john marsden, the faerie queene by edmund spenser, this poison heart by kalynn bayron, sunlight and seaweed by tim falnnery, aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe by benjamin alire saenz, robinson crusoe by daniel defoe, the heart is a lonely hunter by carson mccullers, the great hunt by robert jordan, scythe by neal shusterman, collected poems of w.b. yeats, dead souls by nikolai gogol, the happiest refugee by anh do, yvain the knight with the lion by chretien de troyes, pachinko by min jin lee, she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan, the memory police by yoko ogawa, the last days of judas iscariot by stephen adly guirgis, moby dick by herman melville, selected stories of anton chekhov, sailor moon by naoko takeuchi, king arthur’s death edited by larry d benson, the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoevsky, the silmarillioin by jrr tolkien, kim jiyoung by cho nam-koo, lady susan by jane austen, cranford by elizabeth gaskell, dune by frank herbert, the divine comedy by dante aligheri, silas marner by george eliot, brute by emily skaja, the old man and the sea by ernest hemingway, the lowland by jhumpa lahiri, slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut, relativity the special and general theory by albert einstein, the end of everything by katie mack, lancelot the knight of the cart by chretien de troyes, eugene onegin by alexander pushkin, bonds of brass by emily skrutskie, murders in the rue morgue by edgar allan poe, the lair of the white worm by bram stoker, the legend of sleepy hollow and other stories by washington irving, the perilous cemetery edited by nancy b black, the call of cthulu and other weird stories by h.p. lovecraft, the princess bride by william goldman, the love hypothesis by ali hazelwood, hamlet by william shakespeare, illuminations by arthur rimbaud, the sign of four by arthur conan doyle, the castle of otranto by horace walpole, the other black girl by zakiya dalila harris, malory’s contemporary audience by thomas h crofts, fight club by chuck palahniuk, french romance medieval sweden and the europeanisation of culture by sofia loden, pale fire by vladimir nabokov, speak okinawa by elizabeth miki brina, james acaster’s classic scrapes, tears sighs and laughter: expressions of emotions in the middle ages edited by per fornegard, the queen’s gambit by walter tevis, the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay by michael chabon, in deeper waters by f.t. lukens, darius the great is not okay by adib khorram, enemy of all mankind by steven johnson, blue period by tsubasa yamaguchi, slow days fast company by eve babitz, middlemarch by george eliot, the stone rose by jacqueline rayner, goblin market by christina rossetti, legends of camelot by jacqueline rayner, the grand inquisitor by fyodor dostoevsky, the lady of shalott by alfred lord tennyosn, the krillitane storm by christopher cooper, grit by silas denver melvin, the ones who walk away from omelas by ursula k le guin, scientific autobriography and other papers by max planck, the forged coupon and other stories by leo tolstoy, rose by russell t davies, brideshead revisited by evelyn waugh, if cats disappeared from the world by genki kawamura, the mill on the floss by george eliot, priestdaddy by patricia lockwood, the hidden reality by brian greene, the memoirs of sherlock holmes by arthur conan doyle, classic mechanics by leonard susskind and george hrabovksy, the raven boys by maggie stiefvater, the ruby’s curse by alex kingston, the borgias by paul strathern, north and south by elizabeth gaskell, jane eyre by charlotte bronte, how music works by david byrne, far from the madding crowd by thomas hardy, anxious people by frederik backman, journey’s end by r.c. sherriff, le chevalier as deus espees edited by paul vincent rockwell, dune messiah by frank herbert, gone girl by gillian flynn, white noise by don delillo, blood of elves by andrzej sapkowski, the highlanders by gerry davis, the underwater menace by nigel robinson, either/or by soren kierkegaard, doctor who and the cybermen by gerry davis, piranesi by susanna clarke, breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami, rendezvous with rama by arthur c clarke, the sea by john banville, the basketball diaries by jim carroll, the dry heart by natalia ginzburg, there is confusion by jessie redmon fauset, wiating for godot by samuel beckett, babette’s feast by isak dinesen, & ms ice sandwich by mieko kawakami

aand that’s it! ! thanks for reading? thanks for reading my reading? idk hnjrnjjs

#v.txt #i had no idea how long the actual list was oh my god #putting my whole taste in literature on blast this is only somewhat mortifying but it's okay #also i say 'more or less' bc i've condensed some series (esp graphic novels&manga) into just their title and i think i excluded some more #random ones but this is it this is basically all of them #all 451 uhh #bookshelf

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agathonjack · 4 years

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How Truth was Lost to History

Ancient Greece emerged from their Dark Age with the introduction of a new writing system and a new technology for transmitting ideas. This revolution in idea transmittal gave new power to the masses in a way which had never before been achieved. With this power, those who could wield it soon launched waves of political reform, scientific inquiry, and rhetorical exploration that began with the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These stories were important sociological works of art which compelled mass literacy for the first time in human history (A bit like the Harry Potter effect[1]). It was this mass literacy that supplied both the creative talent as well as the audience for the written word.

Writing as a technology had existed since the 7th millennium BC in the form of Proto-writing. Fast forward to the Mycenaean age and this technology had advanced to the form found in Linear B script (1450 BC). Later, the introduction of the Hebrew script in the eighth century BC allowed the ancient Greeks to form an alphabet that could be easily learned and transmitted[2]. It should not appear too much like a coincidence that the stories of Homer were first recorded around the 7th century BC, on the heels of the new alphabet.

It is telling that the first major written works using this new popular alphabet were less history textbooks and more historical fiction. Whether Homer was one man or many is beside the point. What matters is that multiple versions of his epics existed[3], likely written by the newly literate & newly free citizenry of Athens who had inherited these stories orally for centuries.

This is a period in history akin to both the American revolution and the ‘60s in the western hemisphere. For Breisach[4] to say Homer is a bard whose intent and skill was lacking that of modern historians, is to say Bob Marley, Dylan, or The Beatles were bad history teachers. The narratives of historical events have, throughout all time, been used by the powerful to influence others[5]. The brilliance of the Greek enlightenment is that, from Homer and Solon onward, democracy had a chance precisely because the narrative had been democratized. To contradict Breisach, “The idea that the events of the past could influence those of the present”[6] was ever-present in the minds of the bards, though perhaps not their audiences. Scanlon is emphatic on this point when he states that “Most ancient historians were keenly aware of and engaged in contemporary issues, and they had fundamental views motivating their projects.”[7]

These “fundamental issues as how one knows about the past, which forces shape events, and what is the purpose of historical accounts”[8] should not be relegated to sponsored narratives (such as Xenophon’s or those of Theopompus of Chios) lest we forget the real experiences of the people. This unfortunate loss of history has indeed been our inheritance from the ancient Greek people.

The ability for the people to tell their story and, warn others of the dangers imposed on them by the powerful, is first seen in Homer and is what democracy is all about. The battle for the narrative in ancient Greece lost that freedom to the point where Roman era historians such as Polybius wrote universal histories where Rome dominated the scene.

That this battle was a civil war between the people and the elite can be gleaned in Breisach’s statement that “In the fourth century Homer's influence was still so strong that Plato regretted the poet's hold on Hellenic education and his power over individuals.”[9]. That Plato, a known elitist and dissenter against democracy, should bemoan democratic education in action over 200 years after the reforms of Solon, shows us how fundamental this story was to the education of the citizenry in democratic Athens. It also provides a warning to our own era.

The process which would ultimately end in the defeat of democracy is painted with the development of history as a genre. The path to truth and strength begins with the historical fiction of Homer being recited in the symposium as a form of education for young men. This grew into a more formalized concept of education for the involved citizenry through Progymnasmata (an education which included historical events and characters)[10]. This progressed with the first logographers such as Hecataeus of Miletus[11]. However, despite Breisach’s statement that the logographers “Around 500B.C…began to grope towards the concept of continuous time”[12], Persky shows that “age-based organization was one of the defining features of Greek society…established by the Bronze Age”[13] thus, showing the concept of tracking and organizing of social markers based on time well before the logographers.

It seems far more likely that the expansion of the Greek city-states into empires was the cause for the emerging need to tell a history that explained the life of a city-state with its highly inclusive attitude toward its conquered peoples. The Greeks had for so long been on the receiving end of culture[14], they now wished to show how connected they were to their new subjects. By the time history matured to fruition, Rome had learned the lesson and taken the lead, making the Greeks their subjects and including them in their Roman-centered universal histories.

It is of some interest that the founding fathers of the genre simply created a framework of wars by which to remember humanity. While Homer provided a “don’t touch” warning to warfare and pride, future historians provided a “how to” manual which encouraged pan-Hellenism through warfare. The primary difference lay in origin of intent. The Persian Wars began in Ionia soon after Cleisthenes' reforms and were documented by Herodotus, a native Ionian[15]. Herodotus then, could be seen as the original Ben Franklin, writing to encourage unity against an invading force. This defensive posture can be seen in his writing. We are not only recipients of the military events he wrote on but, we have inherited “the spirit of inquiry, … applied both to his original focus on events that were secular, political, and human”[16]. Herodotus’ uncle Panyassis, a famous poet[17], may have contributed to his skill and broad interests. This example shows how limiting a single-genre image of any time is. For this reason, Herodotus may have been not only the father of history, but the last historian of the era. What follows could be seen rather as elitist Generals, war reporters, and fifth column propagandists.

The Peloponnesian War following not long after the Persian Wars, and documented by Thucydides, is fundamentally different in that Thucydides had been a General in that war and so his work “reflects the…hoplite culture”[18] of the mainland and of an attacking army. Further, his perspective reflected his family’s political and economic positions. What we can trust however, is that his family connections provided him a reason to write on behalf of the Athenian elite. Thucydides did not only write the events of a military history. He went further by teaching the next generation of Greek decision makers how to handle the next threat from abroad.

According to Breisach, Thucydides introduced the concept that “The Peloponnesian War resulted not from the capricious wishes of gods or kings, or from misguided human passions, but from the ceaseless human quest for power”[19]. This is, in essence, producing the same warning to the Greeks as had been made by the Gods through the epics of Homer. This time however, the same pride the epics had warned against was being displayed by the new logographers by excluding truth in favor of fact.

The generation preceding the Peloponnesian War to the invasion of the Macedonian barbarians marked the fall of City-State power, finally resulting in a shift of power to the Macedonian kingdom. During this void where no great war united the people, the narrative battle for cultural sovereignty raged. The tug-of-war ranged from Isocrates’ inciting a new great war with Persia[20] to the return to local histories (Attidographers) but with the new techniques from the past century, to the writings of Xenophon which ultimately promoted Hellenic disunity. Xenophon seems less a historian and more a propagandist to the highest bidder. This marks the point in history when historians became the mercenaries they wrote about.

“Gone was the passionate concern that had made Thucydides, for example, analyze…to search for the forces tearing apart the Athenian Empire”[21]. Rather, the public was deemed redundant and so efforts to work with them moved from teaching statesmanship to encouraging distractions from decision making. This shift marked the end of a fleeting truth; a return to a narrative formed by the powerful.

Bibliography

Bernstein, William J. Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet. London: Atlantic, 2013.

Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, & Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Gibson, Craig A. “Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata.” Classical Philology 99, no. 2 (2004): 103–29. doi:10.1086/423858.

The Homer Multitext Project. “HMT Blog.” Accessed May 20, 2020. https://www.homermultitext.org/.

Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

Homer. The Odyssey, Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001.

Ogden, Daniel. A Companion to Greek Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2007.

Persky, Richard K. “Kairos: a Cultural History of Time in the Greek Polis” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009.

Person. “Harry Potter Helps Lift School Literacy Rates.” The Sydney Morning Herald. Last modified September 19, 2002. https://www.smh.com.au/national/harry-potter-helps-lift-school-literacy-rates-20020919-gdfnbn.html.

Scanlon, Thomas Francis. Greek Historiography. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

[1] Person, “Harry Potter Helps Lift School Literacy Rates.” The Sydney Morning Herald. Last modified September 19, 2002. https://www.smh.com.au/national/harry-potter-helps-lift-school-literacy-rates-20020919-gdfnbn.html.

[2] William J. Bernstein, Masters of the Word (London: Atlantic, 2013), 12.

[3] “HMT Blog.” The Homer Multitext Project. Accessed May 20, 2020. https://www.homermultitext.org/.

[4] Ernst Breisach, Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 6.

[5] Bernstein, Masters of the Word.

[6] Breisach, Historiography, 7.

[7] Thomas F. Scanlon, Greek Historiography (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015),5.

[8] Breisach, Historiography, 6.

[9] Breisach, Historiography, 8.

[10] Craig A. Gibson, “Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata.” Classical Philology 99, no. 2 (2004): 103–29. doi:10.1086/423858.

[11] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 19.

[12] Breisach, Historiography, 10.

[13] Richard K. Persky, “Kairos: a Cultural History of Time in the Greek Polis” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009), 69.

[14] Daniel Ogden, A Companion to Greek Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007.

[15] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 9.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Scanlon, Greek Historiography, 9.

[19] Breisach, Historiography, 15.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Breisach, Historiography, 31.

#historiography #ancient greece #propaganda #greek history #essay

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blockheadbrands · 5 years

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Woodstock Wasn’t The Beginning: A Brief History of Music Festivals

Tom Cohen of High Times Reports:

How we’ve been dropping the bass and lighting up for thousands of years.

Humans are born alone, but we get together to listen to music and party. You might even say that the history of humans is the history of music and festivals. Parties have been popping long before Coachella’s lineup was announced because we’re social creatures and even the most introverted people still get FOMO. Throughout history, people all over the world have been getting together to play music and rage like college sophomores at festivals.

We have early proof of festival and party culture thanks to something that makes every party special: the music. Before humans ever settled into farming around 6,000 years ago, when we still were migratory hunters and gatherers, people were already getting together in sacred places to eat, paint, and have jam seshes. Hunting and gathering required teamwork and planning, so early humans were already getting together to create surpluses of food, which allowed for leisure time and creative expression like music and cave paintings.

Most importantly, the archaeological record shows that paleolithic humans were enjoying crunchy beats at least 35,000 years ago. In modern Germany, flutes have been discovered in regions where people were gathering to paint caves of animals and carve small female forms. The weather wasn’t the only thing that made the Ice Age pretty cool.

When people began farming, civilizations formed along with a new reason to party: the harvest. Harvests allowed humans to enjoy the fruits of their labor with bountiful food for feasts. Learning how to garden also gave party people nature’s greatest gift—hemp—along with grains and grapes, which people quickly figured out how to ferment into beer and wine. The word festival actually comes from the Latin festum or feast. These early civilizations even had music. Ancient groups celebrating with weed, beer, wine, and music can’t have been too far off from our modern festivals. The earliest archaeological evidence of wine has been dated to 7000 BCE in China, and beer has been dated at archaeological sites to 11000 BCE in Israel. Hemp and marijuana have been grown and utilized for millenia. These early festivals often had the same ethos as Woodstock and Coachella. Take Mehregan, for example. It was a Zoroastrian festival in 5th century BCE in ancient Persia that celebrated friendship, love, and affection.

The first recorded contemporary-style festival took place in ancient Greece. Every four years, the Greeks held athletic and artistic competitions at the Pythian Games (a precursor to the original Olympics). Musicians would play stringed instruments like the cithara (which is where we get the word guitar) and aulos (an ancient pipe), and the best players were rewarded with a crown of laurels not unlike the flower crowns that have become compulsory at Coachella. Cities would send their best to compete, and people from all around the Greek world would travel to see the festivities.

While the Pythia (in whose honor the games were held) was not a teetotaler, the festival itself lacked the more recreational aspects we seek at modern festivals. However, the ancient Greeks were also known to party in other ways. And, while the Greeks may not have invented drug-fueled ragers, they may have perfected them as an art. Some Greeks and Romans worshipped Dionysus, the god of wine and partying, whose followers would congregate, get wasted, and have group sex. These followers would get so high they would become enthusiastic the Greek word for “possessed by god.” Allegedly, these parties (called bacchanalia) were originally women-only orgies, but later versions were open to everyone from every social class.

Around the world, it is common for festivals to take place around the winter and summer solstices and fall and spring equinoxes. Saturnalia (the pagan version of Christmas) was an all-out rager where slaves and masters traded places, exchanged gifts, and had sex with everybody. Or, as the Roman poet Catullus said of Saturnalia. “the festival day of Saturnalia, the best of days!”

In India, the Holi festival occurs around the spring equinox and celebrates color, love, and forgiveness. Like many spring festivals, it asks us to celebrate the new spring and to forgive and forget the past. Holi is also known for its dramatic throwing of colored pigments into the air. And, of course, some groups celebrating Holi consume bhang, an powdered form of cannabis put in drinks or on food. A celebrant of Holi stated to a Western researcher: “Holi, he said with a beatific sigh, is the Festival of Love!”

In fall, many east-Asian countries celebrate the Mid-Autumn or Harvest Festival (中秋節 Zhōngqiū Jié in Chinese) where attendees worship the harvest moon, light lanterns, and celebrate marriages. Mooncakes, a special sweet pastry, are eaten in celebration of the harvest moon and autumn’s bounty.

What are the equinoxes and solstices? I’d be remiss if I didn’t mark a day or two on the calendar. You may think the calendar is just an ever-shortening stack of daily jokes on your desk at work, but it is actually an ancient calculation (later updated in modern times) of the earth’s wobbly trip around the sun. The four seasons are defined by the earth’s tilt and we often celebrate festivals when the earth is balanced or fully tilted. We live our ordinary lives most days of the year, working and wobbling through weeks and months. It is on special days, the days when the earth’s tilt becomes balanced or changes direction, that time itself changes.

Now, the difference between a festival and kickback is more than the number of people who show up. It’s about that special time in which we celebrate. Because, as much fun as a kickback can be, we all know it lacks the je ne sais quoi that Coachella or a Holi have. When we attend a festival, whether it is a Harvest Festival in China or EDC in Las Vegas, we remove ourselves from the normal passage of time. Just as a holiday (which comes from the Old English for “Holy Day”) is distinct from the normal work week, a festival exists outside of ordinary time.

Our lives don’t stop but we are freed from our normal constraints and can live fully in this time-outside-of-time. Normal, chronological or linear time ceases its too persistent tick-tock where we plan our retirements and wait for 5 o’clock. Special time, or what the Greeks called kairos, allows us to live in the moment, to make love to strangers and consume drugs with impunity and without fear of repercussions. Festival time is part of the magic that keeps us coming back summer after summer and gives relief form the tedium and grind of everyday life.

The importance of time is also found in music. Musical time is the heartbeat of life and one we take part in through dance. Before mosh pits or twerking ever danced their way into our hearts, people were getting together en masse to dance the night away. In 12th century Persia, Sufi Muslims began a practice known as semazen or what the West calls the Whirling Dervishes. A form of meditation, a dervish wears a colorful skirt, contemplates Allah, and spins like the wash cycle, entering an ecstatic trance. In a dizzying statistic, according to the Guiness Book of Records, the most sufis spinning together was 755 in Taiwan in 2011.

Not all of these group dance sessions are sober. In Europe, during the Middle-Ages and Renaissance, there were episodes of so-called “dancing plagues” where thousands of people would simultaneous and frantically dance for hours or days on end. Culminating in 1518 in Alsace, a dancing plague struck hundreds of people who danced for over a month, some of them dying from exhaustion. These proto-flash mobs affected everyone in a town and are well documented over hundreds of years. One explanation is that ergot, a fungi that grows on rye used for bread and is structurally related to LSD, was accidentally and simultaneously eaten by the entire city. This resulted in unbaked bread getting a whole town half-baked.

The origin of the modern music festival is generally credited to the Monterey Pop Festival where Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin, the Dead, and Otis Redding jammed in June, 1967. Distinct from a simple concert that lasts for a few hours at most, the Monterey Pop Festival raged for several days with multiple headliners. Two years later, the definitive 60s music festival was held in Woodstock, New York where nearly half a million people turned out to see and hear what may be the greatest rock n roll lineup of all time including: The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Santana, and Joan Baez.

Woodstock as a cultural phenomenon transcended the music. It represented the peace, love, and naivete of the 1960s counterculture movement in all of its drug use and muddy sex. It showed the world that hundreds of thousands of young people were more interested in music and introspection than joining the workforce or fighting a war in Vietnam. That despite all of the rain, the bad acid, heat, and lack of facilities or conveniences, people could get together to celebrate human life in its most pure form. Or, as Joni Mitchell said, “Woodstock was a spark of beauty where half-a-million kids saw that they were part of a greater organism”.

The counterpoint to Woodstock is the infamous Altamont Free Concert in December, 1969. Advertised as the Californian Woodstock and with many of the same headliners, it became a violent riot with at least four deaths and multiple injuries including an LSD-induced drowning. While the Rolling Stones played Under My Thumb, Meredith Hunter, a teenager allegedly on methamphetamines, approached the stage with a gun before being driven off, stabbed, and killed by the Hells Angels motorcycle gang that had been hired to provide security. The dark villainy of Altamont provides chiaroscuro when compared to Woodstock’s sex and peace and together they signal the end of the innocent 60s and the beginning of the jaded 70s: a story arc that inspired Don Mclean’s immortal American Pie.

Although music festivals continued through the 70s and 80s, notably at the Reading, Leeds, and Glastonbury Festivals in the United Kingdom as well as the Newport Folk (where Dylan first went electric and got booed) and Jazz Festivals in the United States, it wasn’t until the 90s that the large scale, recurring festivals like Lollapalooza, Warped Tour, Bonnaroo, and Coachella began.

As a cultural phenomenon, music festivals are as mainstream today as they were countercultural in the 60s. This is less a reflection on the pop music that now permeates the lineups of Coachella and Bonnaroo, but rather that supply has met the demand of teenagers everywhere and music has become a ubiquitous part of society. By my count, there are currently at least 255 large scale music festivals that occur each year in the United States alone. Just the top 15 festivals drew over 2 million people last year. Attending one of these celebrations of life and music has become as much a rite of passage for young people as taking that first hit of a joint in high school, and playing one of these festivals has become as much a sign of ‘making it’ for bands as appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone once signalled.

Where festivals were once folk, rock, or jazz oriented, they’ve become increasingly eclectic and integrated. This summer alone, bands and acts as diverse but complementary as Phish, Childish Gambino, Post Malone, Solange, Cardi B, Tame Impala, Courtney Barnett, Fleet Foxes, Moses Sumney, Paul Simon, and Lil Wayne will grace some of the same stages across the country. It is only the communal beauty of a festival that can bring such acts together in new blends of art and music and celebrate the diversity of the nation.

The future of music festivals is as hazy as the smoke and trash covered fields we’ve all frequented in our teens and twenties. The cost of attending can be prohibitive, the acts trend more and more towards multimedia light shows of sensory overload, and festival organizers themselves seem driven by profit. However, we are a celebratory species and as long as people are people we will celebrate with love, drugs, music, and each other.

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https://hightimes.com/culture/woodstock-wasnt-beginning-brief-history-music-festivals/

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