The Mess is a new column from journalist Richard Villegas, who has been reporting on new, exciting sounds flourishing in the Latin American underground for nearly a decade. As the host of the Songmess Podcast, his travels have intersected with fresh sounds, scene legends, ancestral traditions, and the socio-political contexts that influence your favorite artists. The Mess is about new trends and problematic faves whilst asking hard questions and shaking the table.
We’re going there. We’re talking about it. Even if things get a little messy.
Shortly after I started writing at Remezcla a decade ago, I learned my editors had a nickname for me: The Music Festival Guy. I was living in New York City and a faithful attendee of The Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC), but also traveled regularly for Ruido Fest in Chicago, Supersónico in Los Angeles, and Festival NRMAL in Mexico City, living up to my moniker. Cut to present day, and I’m still an avid festival-goer. Just this year, I went to Isle of Light in Santo Domingo, AXE Ceremonia in Mexico City, and Festival Cordillera in Bogotá. I also planned on hitting up Primavera Sound in Buenos Aires until all of the megafestival’s American franchises were abruptly canceled last month. Sadly, they weren’t alone. California psych institution Desert Daze was canceled the same day, joining a growing list of shuttered Stateside events, including Riverbend Festival in Tennessee and the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. Even hypebeast behemoth Coachella reported lower sales this year, fueling concerns of a post-pandemic festival bubble on the brink of bursting.
Think back to 2021 and how, after a year of horrific loss and uncertainty, live music began slowly picking up again. Every band under the sun seemed to announce a tour, and music festival lineups returned more stacked than ever, with Mexico City’s Corona Capital and Bogotá’s Festival Estéreo Picnic swelling to gargantuan – and expensive – four-day runs. The overabundant supply of talent matched the demand of audiences suffering from acute cabin fever. But three years on, the thirst is quenched. Festival fatigue has set in, and people’s pockets are hurting, in no small part due to the political instability and rampant inflation plaguing the continent. The pandemic also caused many small and medium venues to shut down, decimating established circuits and throwing touring musicians into even steeper precarity. And then there’s the increasingly elusive matter of what audiences actually want…
“The problem with music festivals is they’re running out of headliners,” declared popular Colombian YouTuber and social media creator Jose M in a video reacting to critiques of Estéreo Picnic’s poptimist 2025 lineup topped by Olivia Rodrigo, Shawn Mendes, and Justin Timberlake. Speaking with Remezcla, he elaborates that “the notion of headliners is outdated. There are no more Michael Jacksons or Madonnas, these super iconic artists that reached you through traditional media back when those outlets were monopolized by major labels. The landscape has been segmented into niches [seen in festivals like When We Were Young and Arre]. There’s no longer a consensus on which artists are popular, and even global stars like Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift would rather play their own concerts than adapt to a festival format.”
The hard truth is audiences also prefer standalone shows. And why not? Why should we, as fans and customers, be thrilled to pay exorbitant ticket prices to spend 12 hours on our feet, exposed to the elements, and pissing in blown-out porta potties, to then catch an abbreviated version of our fave’s show? When I saw Rosalía last year at Estéreo Picnic, her 75-minute slot was nearly half the length of her enclosed Motomami theater shows. In 2022, when I went to see C. Tangana at Isle of Light for the first Latin American performance of El Madrileño, a violent tempest rained out his set and all other international headliners – see kids, this is why you show up for the opening acts. In 2017, the weather also threatened to take down Festival Ceremonia, and, of course, your festipapi was there to cover the ordeal.
Music festivals used to be a wholesale concert experience, where more bands playing a single event translated to economical deals for fans, organizers, and touring acts. This justified the indignities of heatstroke, inflated food and transportation costs, and olympic breath-holding at bathroom time. But avarice and archaic strategies are ruining the party for everyone. Primavera Sound’s unfettered growth crashed in spectacular and cautionary fashion. Bookers continue showing a galling disregard for women, either by not booking them at all or cynically topping bills with known abusers such as Arcade Fire’s Win Butler (Corona Capital) and Marilyn Manson (Machaca). And the nefarious 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster – who’ve since acquired Lollapalooza, Rock in Rio, and promoters like OCESA in Mexico and Páramo Presenta in Colombia – have riddled transactions with punishing, fluctuating fees that are finally incurring government investigations.
“This flood of festivals has intensified competition for audiences, affecting quality and profitability,” says Lucía Anaya, aka DERRETIDA, booker at Mexico’s Carnaval de Bahidorá. “Bidding wars have made talent much more expensive, and in some cases, our offers have been tripled by other festivals, and thus, the artist chooses to go with them. In the long run, this practice inflates prices and the expectations of bands that see Mexico as a gold mine, which is becoming unsustainable for independent festivals.”
So, how do we move forward to prevent the music festival ecosystem from collapsing? Well, capitalist greed will likely push the industry to a breaking point first. But in Spain, Mad Cool Festival and journalist Nando Cruz, author of the book Macrofestivales, have made a case for smaller events, gradually shrinking attendance numbers, but also production costs, traffic, and environmental impact. On the marketing front, Jose M suggests a redistribution of font sizes could take pressure off repeat headliners and international names that aren’t universally appealing. He also highlights Páramo’s smaller festival, Hermoso Ruido, a training ground for rising acts that educates audiences on the value of local talent before eventually pipelining them to the daunting stages of Estéreo Picnic.
This flood of festivals has intensified competition for audiences, affecting quality and profitability. Bidding wars have made talent much more expensive.
Investing in local artists also reduces booking costs like airfare and work visas, which Anaya says is one of the strategies Bahidorá is pursuing to maintain its boutique status. She also notes the caché of homegrown legends like Julieta Venegas and Maná, who’ve cultivated loyal audiences over decades but have been recently re-contextualized in the younger guise of festivals like Ceremonia and Vive Latino.
“Our primary focus has always been to offer a first-rate festival despite rising costs, but minding an overall budget,” adds Pilar Collado, Booker at DF Entertainment, the production company behind Lollapalooza Argentina. “Audiences expect and demand sonically diverse lineups that also appeal to different generations, so it’s important to program new artists alongside legends that feel close to home.”
Perhaps the finest example of this ethos is Festival Cordillera in Bogotá, which I attended a few weeks ago and contrasted beloved icons like Juan Luis Guerra and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs against rising local stars Duplat and Lalo Cortés. The festival celebrates the enduring legacy of Spanish language music at a time when Latin American festivals overwhelmingly favor Anglo headliners, underscoring regional pride and resonating across generations and socio-economic strata. But not all is nostalgia.
“Sustainability is part of Festival Cordillera’s DNA,” says Miguel Santacoloma, Director of Communications at Páramo Presenta. With growing concerns around climate change and the forest fires that have besieged Colombia in recent years, the organization’s Páramo Impacta program has implemented on-site solar panels, bans on single-use plastics, free water stations, hundreds of recycling bins, and a reforestation initiative Santacoloma says has surpassed 40,000 trees planted. They’ve also partnered with the Colombian food bank association ABACO to extend their sustainability efforts into social programs.
Cordillera reminded me why, as a fan, attending music festivals still matters very much. At face value, losing my millennial mind during Miranda!’s campy disco bacchanal might be the most fun I’ve had all year, and joining La Maldita Vecindad in a multitudinous call for peace in Palestine highlighted the cathartic power of collective solidarity, as well as the cowardice of so many other voices of influence. Despite the free-flowing booze and adrenaline, music festivals can also be sobering spaces of truth: An assembly line of artists fending for themselves on stage without the artifice of industry hype machines. Ticketmaster can try and wring every last penny out of me, but that clarity will always be priceless.
