Mysteryland, EDM commandeer Woodstock site
Live electric current drives its pulse and its roots can be traced to disco.
Millennials, however, lay claim to the beats and rhythms of this 21st century genre of music as a generational style of creative expression.
And this weekend, electronic music will once again commandeer the land in Sullivan County that hosted what many consider to be the crowing achievement of the 1960s counterculture. Mysteryland USA, an electronic music, culture and arts festival, returns to Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which occupies the property where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held in August 1969.
Mysteryland launched in 1993 and has been held in Chile and the Netherlands. The festival made its U.S. debut in 2014 at Bethel Woods, which features a pavilion that has hosted Ringo Starr, the Dave Matthews Band and Phish.
Mysteryland, according to organizers, “Collaborates with the cutting-edge curators, artists, and performers of all genres who personify New York City’s cultural sounds and mediums of self-expression.” The festival features large tents and multiple stages. DJs play electronic music, which is driven by a chugging, propelling beat that generates high energy and a meditative rhythm.
Assa Sacko of Rhinebeck, 30, is the promotions director for Radio Wooodstock (100.1 FM/WDST). She attended Mysteryland USA last year, when it drew a crowd of 17,500.
“I had lots of fun,” Sacko said. “It definitely got me going. The music really reached out to me. It’s so powerful. It really gets into your whole body. You have to get into it.”
Bethel Woods is also home to the Museum at Bethel Woods, which is hosting an exhibit that will complement nicely the influx of thousands to the property once known as Yasgur’s Farm.
“Peace, Love, Unity, Respect: The Rise of Electronic Music Culture in America” runs through May 31 and, according to www.bethelwoodscenter.org, is “Inspired by the new sounds and crowds Mysteryland has brought to Bethel Woods.”
The exhibit, according to Bethel Woods, includes music, lights, interactive festival artworks, costumes and artifacts from disco, rave, club and the electronic dance music culture. And, according to the Museum at Bethel Woods, it “Focuses on the history, aesthetics, and communities that have fostered electronic dance music in America.”
Wade Lawrence, director and senior curator for the Museum at Bethel Woods, called electronic music, “A musical phenomenon that’s groove-based instead of lyric and melody-based.” He also described electronic music as “extended songs that are meant to be felt and experienced rather than listened to.”
Mysteryland USA is a good fit for Bethel Woods, Lawrence said.
“Think of what Woodstock was,” he said. “It was a bunch of kids getting together to hear their music and to experience freedom outside of the view of their parents.”
The same could be said, he added, of Mysteryland USA.
“Mysteryland is about a total freedom of expression,” Lawrence said. “It’s based on freedom and respect — with freedom comes responsibility ... Young people today, and I mean those who are 16-30, they have their own ideas of what their ideal is, what their utopia is.”
Woodstock and Mysteryland USA offer “exactly the same thing,” Lawrence said.
John W. Barry: jobarry@poughkeepsiejournal.com, 845-437-4822, Twitter: @JohnBarryPoJo
If You Go
Mysteryland USA electronic music, culture and arts festival
When: May 22 through 25
Where: Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Bethel, Sullivan County
Information: Visit www.bethelwoodscenter.org and www.mysteryland.us or call 1-866-781-2922 for information on tickets, the festival, the venue, camping and more.
Also: The Museum at Bethel Woods is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. The box office closes at 5:30 p.m. On May 23 and May 24 the Museum at Bethel Woods, the Woodstock festival field and the Woodstock monument will be accessible only to Mysteryland ticket holders. Museum admission is Adults: $15; Ages: 65 and older: $13; Ages 8–17: $11; Ages 3–7: $6; Children under 3: free.
Electronic Dance Music Glossary
Korina Lopez, USA TODAY
Break-what? Dub-who? For new fans of electronic dance music, the terminology is a maze of genres and sub-genres. Let’s let musician Moby, who performed at Mysteryland USA in 2014, help us sort them all out:
EDM: “The first thing to know,” Moby says, “is that no one calls it electronic dance music. The term is EDM, and it’s a catch-all term for the different forms of electronic music.”
BPM: “All EDM is rooted in bpms (beats per minute),” says Moby, who set a Guinness World Record for fastest tempo in a single with his 1,000-bpm song “Thousand.” “So trance music is faster, house music is slower.”
Dubstep: “It’s a descendant of jungle, an early ‘90s, very fast form of EDM with reggae and breakbeat influences. Jungle morphed into drum and bass, and then there was an offshoot of that, two-step, which slowed the bass lines way down,” Moby says. “Heavy metal and hip-hop, interestingly, share the same tempo, around 75 bpm. Dubstep is an amalgamation of the two.”
House and techno: “They’re both offshoots of ‘80s disco,” Moby says. “House has a slower bpm, techno is faster.” Both house and techno adhere to a steady 4/4 drum pattern.
Breakbeat: This rhythm breaks up 4/4 patterns with syncopation and is often used in dubstep.
“It uses a lot of samples and is not as fast as house music, but faster than hip-hop,” Moby says. “The Chemical Brothers made it very popular, but I’d credit Fatboy Slim with bringing it to the mainstream.”
Acid: “It’s not the drug,” Moby says. “Acid specifically refers to the sound of a bass line, and it’s very synthetic. It was a sound created in the late ‘80s with the Roland TB 303 bass synthesizer, which has a very harsh sound.” Acid can also be used to distinguish between subgenres, such as acid house and acid breaks.
Electro: “It’s meant so many things in the last 30 years. Originally, it meant futuristic electronic music and was used to describe Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa. Now, it means hard electronic dance music.” Electro can be used as an adjective, such as electro-house and electro-pop.
Did You Know:
According to a survey conducted by the Nielsen Company:
• 55 percent of electronic music listeners are male. Of that number, 40 percent are between the ages of 18 and 49.
• Of the 45 percent of electronic music listeners who are female, 29 percent are between the ages of 18 and 49.