Throughout the day Saturday, University of Wisconsin’s own Revelry Music and Arts Festival joined UC-San Diego and Yale’s festivals in a national spring festival snap story.
But while the fun and excitement of the other two universities events’ were clear, Revelry might have never happened based on the snap story.
While the story was filled with videos of performers such as Miguel, Vince Staples and A-Trak and general tomfoolery from Yale and UCSD, the only snaps featured from Revelry were of someone standing in front of the Orpheum saying doors open at 5 p.m., WebsterX’s soundcheck and a photo of the stage afterwards with the caption, “That’s a wrap, folks.”
As far as anyone viewing this story could tell, Revelry never actually happened. There weren’t any Snaps to prove Hudson Mohawke dropped the bass or iLoveMakonnen played “Tuesday.”
Even though Revelry did actually happen, this vacant story may have contained more truth than it let on, considering the crowd didn’t ever exceed 250 or 300 people out of a possible 2,000.
Calling this year’s Revelry a festival doesn’t even seem right. It wasn’t outside (not necessarily a requisite for being a festival, but it helps), there weren’t multiple stages and there definitely wasn’t a festival vibe. It was more or less a long show, and a miserable long show at that.
But this failing shouldn’t be pinned on Revelry organizers, but rather the fallout stemming from Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts to the UW System. Organizers this year planned the festival with a much smaller budget, and were also forced into The Orpheum due to construction around Memorial Union. The result, frankly, was grim.
To emphasize this, let’s take a walk through Revelry’s strong past. Two years ago the event featured Dillon Francis, Waka Flocka and a pre-arena G-Eazy. Finally, last year gave us the return of Chance the Rapper, the Chainsmokers, AlunaGeorge and Mic Jenkins. Revelry gained steam from year to year and seemed to be booking better and drawing more people.
This year’s version, though, stopped the momentum dead in its tracks.
That’s not to say this year’s was without any good moments. Hudson Mohawke was an excellent booking, and while he may not excite the masses in the way a group like the Chainsmokers does, he makes smart, heavy and danceable electronic music.
His set Saturday was the bright spot of the festival. For 50 minutes, Mohawke enlivened the few people who were at Revelry with his bass-heavy, melodic sounds. The songs that came off best were from TNGHT, his collaboration with artist Lunice, including “Easy Easy” and “Bugg’n.”
Following Hudson Mohawke was iLoveMakonnen, known primarily for his smash hit “Tuesday” and for being a part of Atlanta’s on-the-rise, weird hip-hop scene. After his DJ hyped the crowd with standard-issue “bangers” and people incoherently jumped around on stage for a few minutes, Makonnen emerged with some half-hearted greetings.
Wearing a black bomber hat and a black shirt, he played a series of one to two minute snippets from his songs. Unfortunately, his energy exceeded his actual performing chops. While Makonnen’s unique and interesting voice still sounded good in a live setting, his songs just weren’t written to be played live.
It also has to be said again how the dismal turnout affected the atmosphere. It really didn’t matter who was playing in front of the crowd, as it would have taken a legendary performer to overturn the creeping feeling of general sadness produced when a venue is at only about one-eighth of its capacity.
You couldn’t even blame the few Revelry attendees if they glimpsed the Snapchat live story and felt an urge to transfer to UCSD or Yale — schools that do have the budget to put on respectable, fun spring festivals.
For next year, Revelry will have to give itself a long, hard look in the mirror and innovate, lest it go down in history as the spring festival Walker killed.
