The original Coachella lineup from 1999 was predominately rock acts and white men, but today’s lineup at the prestigious music festival is more diverse and international than ever.
More than half of the performing artists at the massive desert festival in 2023 are from countries other than the United States, including performers from Puerto Rico, South Korea, Belgium, and Pakistan.
As streaming and social media provide clear metrics on what is popular and lucrative, the focus on genre-spanning music performed in a variety of languages highlights the US industry’s evolving response to global tastes.
The weekend’s opening night was headlined by Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican reggaeton king and biggest star in the world. His heart-pounding performance paid homage to the influential lineage of Caribbean music and had his fans yelling with joy.
Tens of thousands of fans descended on the main stage on Saturday night for the K-pop megastars BLACKPINK’s explosive set of pop bangers, which was preceded by a mesmerizing drone-powered light show and punctuated by pyrotechnics. BLACKPINK’s performance was one of the weekend’s most talked-about performances, and they made history by becoming the first Asian act to headline the festival.
CedarBough Saeji, a professor of Korean and East Asian studies and an expert in K-pop, believes that the festival schedule that emphasizes the hottest acts from around the globe is long overdue.
The ongoing public demand for K-pop, she continued, “is clear, even to people who may be watching the financial bottom line much more closely than they’re watching trends.”
There are many people in America, which has a sizable music market, said Saeji. It’s a hugely significant tastemaker, but global cultural currents have changed.
A new journey
Major performers like Burna Boy from Nigeria, Bjork from Iceland, and Rosalia from Spain all had headlining slots on the festival’s main stage, while Diljit Dosanjh and Ali Sethi from India and Pakistan respectively drew sizable crowds to their exhilarating performances.
Sethi told insiderblm after his performance, “Seeing those brown faces in their best, sort of like South Asian regalia with a twist, it gave me so much courage.”
Coachella “welcomes us and has us here, it’s a new trip” for “those of us who are coming from other places, coming from other traditions, who are speaking languages: visual languages, musical languages, and literally languages that haven’t been heard here before.”
Sethi was already extremely well-known before his Coachella performance: his song “Pasoori” had more than half a billion views on YouTube and was the most searched song on Google in 2022.
Saeji, a scholar, asserts that the internet has been crucial in “leveling the playing field.”
She claimed that the internet was to blame for the increased awareness of artists from nations other than the traditional hegemons among global audiences.
No matter how hard the US music industry may continue to try to gatekeep, I predict that eventually we will see charting music coming from multiple languages all the time.
“And that’s lovely.”
Colorful
Christine and the Queens from France, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs from Argentina, and Angele from Belgium were also featured.
Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean performer, made festival history by becoming the first performer to give a complete set in Arabic.
Omer Mesci, a Turkish electronic musician better known by his stage name Minus the Light, told AFP after his set that it’s especially “inspiring” for him as a DJ to see such an international lineup of artists. Mesci was born and raised in Turkey.
“Music is music,” he declared. “That’s what makes it lovely,’ she said. In terms of the music and the people, it’s very colorful.
With fans clamoring for her as she blasted through a set of her daring, kaleidoscopic songs fusing styles, one of the most eagerly anticipated acts of the weekend was Rosalia, the Spanish superstar who first gained fame as a flamenco revisionist before rocketing to the top of pop with her smash third album, “Motomami”.
She yelled, “Good night, Coachella!” as cheers erupted from the audience. “Your presence fills my heart to overflowing. This stage is particularly special for me because I’m from Barcelona. You are the reason I am here.
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