As someone who frequents music festival and is aware of the culture involved, I had many ideas of what Timbuktu might be like. What I was prepared for were drum circles, meditation workshops, and lots of love in the air; instead I found that I had left my quiet home in Tampa for a three day raver’s paradise in the woods of Alabama. When I first arrived on the scene, it was daylight and not much was happening. But by the time night fell, shit got really real, really fast
Flow artists of every kind imaginable emerged from their encampments in the trees and began to dazzle festival goers with fire, light toys, and hula hoops. Due to the inhumanly talented nature of the artists, you could not only feel the music rattle your rib cage, but you could watch a visual representation illuminate the dark crowd.
As it got later and people began engaging with the DJs on stage, a new element of chaos was added to the night. Though the page for the event lists three stages, random DJ booths were set up at people’s campsites in the clearing. No matter where you walked on the grounds, you could hear the driving thump of some sort of EDM being blasted by one stage or another. A large, dark ditch separated the main stage from the main camping area, but this stopped few people from venturing to the stage they felt most drawn to.
As the nights dragged on, the people became drugged up accordingly. Smoke from concert goers rose and diffused with the barrels of fog pouring from the stages. You could barely make out the dilated pupils in the eyes of the people around you as they asked if you had happened to see their friend “Molly” anywhere. Coupled with the continuous display of strobes, lasers, and backlights, many people soon reached such a level of overstimulation that they had no choice but to lie down in the grass.
My poor camping luck struck at Timbuktu. Thinking I had set my camp deep, deep into the camping area, I soon discovered that I had set up right next to the all night rave tent. When I realized my mistake and tried to move, I was thwarted by a group of fire spinners that had taped off the pathway in front of my car. Even when I tried to sleep, the deep 808’s from the stage shook my sleeping bag and rattled the supports of my tent.
Once the psyco-delirious music faded and the sun rose on the last day, the ruins of a great underground society loomed before me. Timbuktu was unlike any festival I’ve ever been to and I can’t really see anything like this being able to happen again. The level of anarchy, inebriation, and ostentatious display simply can’t happen anywhere but in the middle of Bumfuck, Alabama. Once a year, hidden in the endless woods of the Yellowhammer State, lies this beautiful little world called Timbuktu.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2016.