The 50th annual festival will be one for the books

UC Davis’ will host its 50th annual Whole Earth Festival from May 10 to 12 on the Quad. This event will be filled with music, art and a whole lot of lovable hippies, so wear your Birkenstocks and mingle with your friends while enjoying a vegan pizza.

This student-run event was founded in 1969 as part of a small art project for a class on campus called “Art Happening.”

“I decided to become part of the Whole Earth Festival because I volunteered as a freshman,” said Kennedy Field, a third-year English and art history double major and Chaos Control Director for the Whole Earth Festival via email. “I volunteered for Night Keeping, which is our night-time security and I absolutely loved the experience and the people that I met. I genuinely felt at home.”

While the Whole Earth Festival aims to bring everyone a memorable three days, they also call for an environmental change.

“Not only is it a magical 3 day break from the “Real world”, but it is also a great avenue for sharing ideas and creating change,” said Tinka Peterka, a third-year design major and director of the Whole Earth Festival via email. “Our sustainable efforts and education booths are a great way to bring awareness to environmental and social issues in an inviting way for those who have never been exposed to them before.”

Tianna Ching, a third-year English and cognitive science double major and Publicity Coordinator for the Whole Earth Festival, said that while the festival started out as a small project, it has substantially grown since then, but the initial values remain.

“It was just a way to use art to teach people and visitors about activism, wellness, and environment sustainability,” Ching said.

The event will have multiple booths, some children-friendly and others perfectly tailored to college students. Booths will include craft booths, where vendors will sell jewelry or art, coffee booths, where all the proceeds will go towards funding the next year’s festival and food booths, where visitors can fill their stomachs with sustainable, vegan food for the weekend. WEF will have over 140 vendors at their event, but all will follow the sustainable and environment-friendly theme. With each booth serving its own purpose, the festival has something for everyone.

“It is so rewarding to see all the hard work that we all put in come together in one beautiful event,” Field said. “Leading up to the festival, we check in with each other a lot, but we never know exactly what everyone else is doing, so once it becomes festival we get to see how all of our hard work combines and fits together!”

The festival aims to have a wide range of music. Over the span of three days, the Whole Earth Festival will become home to 30 musicians. In previous years, the Whole Earth Festival hosted many performers including Tempest, Big Sticky Mess and Geographer.

Sticking true to its roots, the festival will have an art space. This will serve as an art gallery for community members to showcase their creations. If interested, WEF takes applications every year from January to March for the upcoming festival.

“It’s a very fun, relaxing time,” Ching said. “Especially [because] it’s kind of in the middle of midterms and all that stuff. So it’s really fun to just relax and hear some good music.”

When purchasing food, the Whole Earth Reusables Cooperatives will provide customers with reusable dishes. They will wash the dirty plates for vendors who choose to make this day a sustainable and environmentally friendly experience. The food vendors are required to use reusable, washable dishes to the best of their ability. If their dishes are not reusable then all of the waste needs to be either recyclable or compostable.

“The planning process always gets difficult,” Field said. “But these moments honestly don’t matter that much, because at the end of the day, the festival just happens. No matter who or how we make mistakes, there are other people there to help and support us and things always work out.”

With the Quad being such a big space, the festival will have three main stages. Their Quad stage will be their largest and host many of the musicians. Each day will hold a new headlining artist and following bands. Headlining the festival is Kid Bloom, Y La Bamba and The Dirt Feelin. The bands Beauty Queen, Indigo Elephant and Tempest will perform during the opening and closing ceremonies. The Cedar Stage will have a much different vibe. The Cedar Stage is smaller and will give the audience the opportunity to hear a wide range of performers. From spoken word and EDM, this stage is meant for visitors to stop by, munch on their sustainable snacks and listen to something they have never heard before. The third stage is the dance stage where multiple cultures will share their dance and traditions with the hundreds of people that enjoy the festival.

“The festival has a life of its own and it’s always amazing to see it come to life in ways we could have never imagined,” Field said.

Ching explained that working on a big event like the Whole Earth Festival requires a lot of work, but with a big group of volunteers and staff, it’s hard not to look at the positive side of the situation.

“It’s a little much,” Ching said. “But when you’re working together in this group, and you’re all sleep deprived and so tired, and delirious it is kind of fun. It’s like hanging out and you’re all in this together and you really do bond.”

While the festival ends at 8 p.m. on Sunday night, it continues for the staff of the WEF. The staff and volunteers will stay afterwards to make sure everything is in its right place and all the trash and compost are put in the correct bins. But even as the festival comes to an end, the festival never fails to make long lasting memories for everyone involved.

“We received a letter last year from an elderly man, thanking our staff for working hard to put on the festival.” Peterka said. “He had met his now wife at the festival almost 40 years ago, proposed to her at the festival a year later, and continues to come with her and the rest of his family each year.”

The Whole Earth Festival is open to the public, but parking isn’t free. The festival will take place all day from May 10 to 12.

Written By: Itzelth Gamboa — arts@theaggie.org

The Arts Desk’s weekly picks for television, movies, books and music

Television: “Portlandia”

This wonderfully weird sketch comedy show was born from the minds of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, who also star in each sketch. The show focuses on expressing the niche eccentricities of people who live in Portland, from hipsters to feminist bookshop owners. Each sketch is weirder than the next, but with the clever writing and Armisen and Brownstein’s effortless chemistry, the show is undoubtedly hilarious, even for those who aren’t from Portland.

Movie: “Love, Simon”

Although just a romantic comedy, “Love, Simon” left its mark on movie-goers and the teenage romance genre alike. The film centers around closeted teen Simon Spier, who is played by the effortlessly likeable Nick Robinson. This Greg Berlanti-directed flick marks the the first film from a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay romance between teenagers, and the feedback from critics was overwhelmingly positive. The film deals with Simon’s sexual identity with nuance and, most importantly, normalcy. It does not try to be revolutionary, deep or tragically sad as many other representations of same-sex love often try to be. The film is cheesy and happy, which is the exact depiction the world needed.

Book: “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

I believe that Maya Angelou’s 1969 autobiography is a novel that everyone should read at least once in their life. The book details Angelou’s childhood and what lead her to become the remarkable force of nature that she is remembered as today. Angelou painfully recounts not only her childhood traumas and insecurities, but the steps she took to overcome them. The novel is poignant and filled with lessons that are still applicable today. Despite the hardships she faced as an African American woman growing up in the rural South, Angelou maintains an unapologetic optimism for others and the world around her in her writing.

Album: “A Place We Knew” by Dean Lewis

Australian singer-songwriter Dean Lewis released his first studio album on March 22. “Be Alright,” his first single off the album, was a success on the charts and shot Lewis into the limelight. His soft, passionate voice over his acoustic guitar brought back an Ed Sheeran-esque sound that has been missing from the charts for a while. The album focuses mainly on the bitter-sweet ending of a relationship. His lyrics are beautiful and deeply relatable. Of the new songs featured on the album, “7 minutes” and “Stay Awake” are the stand-out hits. Both songs showcase Lewis’s vocal range and talent as a lyricist.

Written by: Alyssa Ilsley — arts@theaggie.org

The Arts Desk’s weekly picks for television, movies, novels and music

Television: Bojack Horseman

“Bojack Horseman” is an animated Netflix show about a washed up ‘90s sitcom actor (who is also a horse) and his life in Hollywood. This comical sitcom is a satire of Hollywood, but beneath the surface it’s a depiction of addiction and depression. The show has five seasons with a confirmed sixth on the way in 2019. If you enjoy slightly darker comedy, this show is perfect for you.

Movies: I Heart Huckabees

Written and directed by David O. Russell, who also wrote and directed “American Hustle” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” “I Heart Huckabees” has been described as an existential comedy. The cast is stacked with Dustin Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Naomi Watts and Mark Wahlberg. This 2004 movie is definitely strange, but for those who enjoy movies in the more philosophical realm, this one synthesizes complicated topics with screwball comedy. This movie has received many mixed reviews, most of them negative, but I have yet to watch such an interesting and unique comedy that also explores existential themes.

Novel: Daisy Jones & The Six

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & The Six” was published in March and has received rave reviews from Rolling Stone and the New York Times. The novel is written in interview form, switching between each character, and evokes the nostalgia of old VH1 band documentaries, as it tells the story of the eventual fall of a fictional rock band in the 70s. This book reads as a juicy exposé with elements of romance, rock ‘n’ roll and 70s culture. Everybody tells the story a little differently, but each voice comes together to create an entertaining story. This easy-to-read book is the perfect springtime read for the pool or the Quad.

Album: Some Rap Songs

Earl Sweatshirt dropped “Some Rap Songs” the night after I wrote an article titled “Fall Quarter’s Music: Week by Week” and it has become one of my favorite albums of the year. Sweatshirt’s album comes in at just under twenty-five minutes and Pitchfork credits Sweatshirt as the face of “a new sound and scene that blurs the line between avant-garde jazz and hip-hop.” Because of its unique sound, this album dynamically works both lyrically as an insight into Earl Sweatshirt’s dark and painful psyche or instrumentally as it mixes between hip-hop beats and muffled jazz.

Written By: Rosie Schwarz — arts@theaggie.org