BUKU Music + Art Project - GRAFFITI-LACED MAGIC
Writen by Matthew Demarko
Photography by Matthew Demarko (except where noted)
What do you get when you throw an EDM/rap festival in America’s most charmingly debaucherous city?
In a city simultaneously known as much for its soul-stirring jazz as its bloody mary recipes? As much for its enigmatic parades as its infamous streets both flooded with and named after bourbon? In a city partly haunted, shrouded in mystery, pummeled by hurricanes, and absolutely covered in beads? Where nudity is celebrated, dancing is obligatory, and the streets have a literal pulse?
A city where you can grab drive-through daiquiris and stop off for a crawfish boil in the same run?
You get something like BUKU.
BUKU doesn’t call itself a “festival” - it calls itself a “Music + Art Project.” It’s a small difference, but one that helps define the festival’s soul. And with an environment as crowded as the festival circuit, the small differences are what add up to making an event “can’t miss.”
And BUKU just doesn’t just have small differences; it wears them as graffiti-laced badges of magic.
Celebrating its 10th iteration, BUKU Music + Art Project came back BIG.
Should we be surprised that a festival in New Orleans could emerge from the tragedy of COVID more refined and audacious than ever? Dripping with attitude, stacked with talent, painted in color and pulsing with life?
Probably not, but that doesn’t mean what we witnessed wasn’t surprising.
Tyler the Creator may have said it best as he reigned over his closing set Saturday night:
“This city is for the life, man.
The people in this city have so much life.
”
BUKU’s lineup poster gives a startlingly good first impression of the fest.
First off, it’s STACKED. I wrote in our preview article that they somehow managed to book both Tame Impala and Tyler the Creator, arguably the two most visually stunning live performances in their genres. But when you peruse the rest of the electrically decorated volt green lineup poster, your jaw drops a little lower with each name.
And the decoration of the poster - this wasn’t an afterthought or a lazily assembled jumble of names. This poster FEELS like BUKU. It’s a work of art in itself, and there was much more art to come.
To celebrate reaching decade status, BUKU had a new layout this year, adding an expanded main stage far off the water. This provided an incredibly easy-to-navigate landscape.
They also named their stages for an intuitive experience, and kudos to them for doing so. After years of festivals like Bonnaroo, where stage names like “What” and “Where” confuse everyone in an albeit comedic way, I felt much more grounded here (not something I expected to admit in New Orleans). And Okeechobee, as philosophically inspiring as it is with stages named “Be” “Here” and “Now” fails to tell you absolutely anything about the stage's actual location.
At BUKU, I found myself knowing exactly where I was going just by looking at the lineup screenshot on my phone. “Skyline” had a skyline behind it! “Bridge” had the bridge behind it! Having this type of intuitive flow was a welcome novelty for a festival.
Traversing the longest distance between stages wasn’t an excessive chore either, not just because it wasn’t a great distance, but because BUKU takes the “Art” portion of their name seriously.
When you walked into the festival, two things immediately caught your eye. “Skyline,” the towering production of a main stage, drew attention to the right. But to the left, BUKU’s “Vendor Village” housed in a phalanx of graffiti-laden storage containers, beckoned you from afar. This was the introduction to the art that would continually reveal itself in surprising ways as your exploration continued.
The storage containers, while not a stage, were a heavy focal point, both for trigger-happy Instagram models as well as those who just wanted to dangle their feet from a unique vantage point. Featuring multiple murals along the first wall that stretched three storage containers long, the gallery injected color and life into the landscape, just like the participants.
The murals exploded on the interiors, providing a hallway of rainbows and shade. One side included what appeared to be a laser-controlled theremin. The best seat in the house emerged on the other side once you found the stairs to the upper level. From up there you could look out over most of the festival and marvel at the abundant eye-candy, all while enjoying a more relaxed main-stage viewing experience.
Elsewhere in the village, other storage containers were being painted and then repainted. It’s one thing to see live painting at a fest - it’s another tier to watch an ever-morphing gallery being created before your eyes.
Faculty was one of the vendors housed inside the graffiti village. A mens-centric nail-polish company, their LED-wall mirror-cubed booth offered the option for festival goers to upgrade their nail game. Offering both quality polish and custom BUKU-themed nail stickers (which were seriously fun and lasted all week after the fest) this booth was slammed every time I stepped inside.
If nails weren’t enough body decoration for you, they were offering tattoos next door. No, not temporary tattoos (like I mistakenly thought all of Friday). World Class Tattoos was offering $75 flash art to those brave enough. It was another experience I walked away from merrily laughing, “Only in New Orleans.”
Drag fortune tellers. “She Comes in Peace” hair-braiding booths manned by cosmic clowns. Free flavored “Splash” water with a recycling education component. All these vendors and more were housed in the compound. And at the center of the village was a spinning “BUKU” ball, announcing proudly that the festival was in session.
The vendor village divided “Skyline” (the main stage) and “Bridge” (its smaller sister stage) from each other. Wandering curiously back into the depths of the festival, I wanted to know what still lay on the water. Years ago when we attended in 2016, EVERYTHING was back bordering the river, an experience I remember as the most sardine-packed festival I had ever attended.
Things now are spacious and breezy, and there’s an air of “How do I have this much room here seeing this many amazing artists?”
As one heads back towards the Mississippi, one of the most unique areas of the festival reveals itself - the train tracks. I don’t know a single other festival anywhere that allows you to cross live, operational train tracks. A logistics miracle combined with a photo shoot mecca, this urban landscape is yet another of the little differences that gives BUKU such an original feel.
And the festival actually lets you venture out onto the tracks to a certain pre-ordained limit. A little risky, a little edgy, it’s New Orleans through and through.
Once you can pull yourself away from the urban grit of the tracks, you land at the “Wharf”. For EDM heads, this was home all weekend long. Check this lineup: Kumarion > Wreckno > Lab Group > CloZee > Liquid Stranger. And that was just on Friday. At one stage. Saturday pumped out sfam > Tvboo > Mersiv > Sullivan King > Svdden Death. You could stay here the whole glorious fest and walk away satisfied.
Flooded with a delightfully headier crowd than the rest of the fest, the population of “Wharf” kept you as fixated as the artists.
Wreckno was a seriously surprising highlight Friday afternoon. Channeling big Big Freedia vibes, his Pride-driven combination of shake-your-body-bass, sassy lyrics and machine-gun-rapping ability, Wreckno was a rare show that had you laughing and raging at the same time.
The rail was covered with colorful souls celebrating their diversity, letting their freaky flags fly and having the time of their lives. Showcasing his bravado, in the heat of climactic madness Wreckno challenged the crowd: “Y’all can be so much louder than that!'' And then they were. Incredible showmanship.
CloZee proved, as she always does, that she is queen of tribal EDM, and provided a great musical boost to the bass-heavy stage. Mersiv, with his untamed long hair, had the crowd shaking with his perfect mixes. And Svdden Death somehow balanced an eerie bass vibe with a radiant light show. He also inspired mosh pits turned gorilla-stomping circles. It was bass heaven, and very difficult to pull yourself away from.
Another cool surprise was the existence of shorter mini-sets. One particular 20 -minute interlude at “Wharf” was an incredible set from Baton Rouge local Lango. Several posts have been made since labeling this a “rockstar in the making moment” and they wouldn’t be hyperbolic in the least.
While trying to pass through to John Summit, it drew me in for the wild ride of expressive rap and probabably-most-exciting-keytar that I’ve ever witnessed. Seeing up-and-coming artists is one of the most riveting aspects of any fest, and seeing this highly condensed window of talent made me think that one day I’ll definitely be bragging about catching their visceral sunset BUKU debut.
Towering over the stage from the back is BUKU’s old party boat, and a playfully poignant mural of Louis Armstrong throwing his head back in raucous ecstasy. It’s a fitting reflection of the energy throughout the crowd, and a further permutation of the art woven throughout the fest.
Back on the water there was the tented stage named “Riverside” housed in a boxing ring.
As bizarre as this sounds, the stage led a double life, also playing host to the raunchy enigma known as “Choke Hole.” A drag wrestling circus, the wrestling match I watched pitted a black, born-again, glam eco-warrior against a white, busty, free-wheeling capitalist. As soon as the match began, and the fake breasts started to fly,, it was impossible not to look at your neighbor and ask through a smile “What are we watching?”
Whether ripping out pages from a bible to “force feed religion” to their opponent or using a giant bedazzled cross to finish the job, the wrestlers put on an incredible spectacle. Not music but definitely entertaining and fiercely weird in the New Orleans tradition, this was, again, something I had never seen at a music festival.
And while the stage housed music all weekend long, it’d be tough for me to say that Choke Hole wasn’t the most memorable thing.
Next to “Riverside” was the only enclosed stage, “Ballroom.” Downsized from its massive Mardi Gras World days (where you could see giant floats housed behind fences) the stage added some nice interior diversity to the locale. It was difficult to pull yourself away from the magnitude of the festival outside, but the dark warehouse provided a welcome reprieve from the elements.
A housier mix of a stage, “Ballroom” hosted highlights such as Lady Lavender, John Summit, Dom Dolla, Tierra Whack and Amelie Lens. Being able to completely enclose yourself in darkness from the New Orleans sun was a very cool vibe. And seeing the lasers, lights, and glow toys dance here was a visual treat. VIP viewing also included a spacious second story balcony.
Photo by Elena Lin / @elenashoots for Glasse Factory
Photo by Elena Lin / @elenashoots for Glasse Factory
As time paraded on and the heavy-hitters started to appear on the two largest stages, it was so fun to cross the train tracks back to the fest. If you could catch the sunset here heading to a set, your pictorial dreams and metaphorical voyage would be blissfully granted.
Heading back to the main quadrant of the fest, the stage known as “Bridge” had a footprint large enough to house the following acts: a sunset offering from Rezz, daytime antics from TroyBoi and Vince Staples, a festival surprise in Baby Keem, and undefinable offerings from Kalu Uchis and $uicideboy$. Damn.
We’ve now covered Rezz at four festivals in less than a year, and watching as she hypnotizes larger crowd after larger crowd has been exhilarating. TroyBoi delivered his one-of-a-kind worldly future bass with big smiles, while Kali Uchis offered a seductive menagerie of crooning and dance.
Housing so many eclectic acts (a microcosm of the festival as a whole) this stage had an amazing array of different outfits, characters, and energies to behold.
And it didn’t hurt that right next to it was perhaps the truest honorarium to the Arts: the Don Julio Live Gallery. Featuring eight artists each painting on 8x8 planks, this towering emblem of creativity lorded over “Bridge” with an inviting grin. In an even doper twist, each piece was live auctioned at the end of every day.
When you’d had your fill of antics and as the day came to a close, “Skyline”, the newest BUKU main stage, was inescapable. This was the only stage that had grass as far back as the eye could see, and it gave it a homey, picnic-all-day-with-the-crew type of vibe. It was here that some of the biggest artists in the world descended upon New Orleans to showcase their love for the city and go crazy for the crowd.
Porter Robinson gave an unforgettable performance laced and dripping with emotion: he had played the very first BUKU 10 years ago, and now was proudly returning with a festival and crowd many magnitudes larger. His piano ballads and meme-laden computer-operating-system visuals truly set him apart as an EDM act, with his performance feeling futuristic and nostalgic all at the same time.
One visual highlight was him live-streaming the performance on screen from his Macbook’s webcam as he ran around stage. His smile in the moment speaks volumes.
“This city and this festival are so incredible”
Following Porter was Tame Impala, the de facto re-definers of how many colors can fit in a rainbow. Jaw dropping electric guitar, their custom stage-sized light halo, and confetti that has somehow made confetti at shows cool again all combine into a show that is not to be missed if you ever catch the chance.
“Shall we do it like they do it on Friday night in New Orleans? I imagine they go crazy on a Friday night in New Orleans.”
Saturday saw Alison Wonderland pack the sunset-washed stage as far back as Tame. She was brimming with joy, giddy in her tone every time she jumped on the mic. And if you’re going to get fucked up on a spiritual level, New Orleans is a perfect place to do it.
Glass Animals, who have had the #1 song in America for more than four weeks, followed. Not even closing out the fest. That gives a window into the tier of line-up we had been experiencing all weekend long. Their 8-bit Miami colored visuals were as playful and energetic as they were, running around the stage, raising the mic stand above their heads in unbridled excitement.
“This city, every single time man.”
And finally came Tyler, rap’s oddball turned most exciting and mature prince.
These were the friendliest mosh pits I’ve ever experienced, all raging in a crowd that could rap along just as energetically as the host. His neo-luxury French aesthetic combined with all-encompassing pyrotechnics and flair, Tyler commanded the crowd like he has spent the last 12 years of his career laser focused on this singular moment. To catch him on this “Call Me If You Get Lost” tour is a freaking must if you can.
And then it was over.
Unless you were heading to one of the FOUR BUKU Late parties that the festival organized for its hungry attendees. And even if that wasn’t an option, you were in New Orleans. There were plenty of options.
Walking away from BUKU, you felt like you had experienced a MOMENT. A truly uncommon slice of time decorated with some of today’s most energetic music and badass humans.
It was a festival in the fashion only New Orleans could deliver. And I would proudly label it a “can’t miss” fest for 2023. If you haven’t visited New Orleans - go. If you have - go back. I can only imagine how BUKU is going to top what they just created this year.
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