Boom Festival, a Celebration of Life

Maybe decentralization has to be done this way: do you want to go to a unique event? You have to go deep inland, it will be worth the effort!

The Boom Festival brings thousands of young people (some in body, others only in spirit) to Idanha, the most interior inland imaginable, to spend a unique and splendorous week.

 

It is a biannual Festival, and even more so: it is the great gathering of the universal and ecumenical tribe, people of all ages, genders and creeds. It is the summer festival in its quintessence, either because it owes nothing to anyone - it does not sell its surname to any commercial brand and because of this there is no visual pollution or advertising noise - either because it is not only made of music. Of course, this is omnipresent, especially all types of trance, but the Boom always brings with it art and artists, exhibitions, lectures, workshops, with anthropology, spirituality and emotional intelligence as mainstream themes.

 Interculturality is Boom’s main line. People coming from all over the world - Boom is one of the most respected trance and electronic festivals on a global level and has relevant ambassadors in 54 countries - and when in Idanha there are no nations, there is only one tribe united against any kind of stereotype.

Of course this mood immediately dictates who we are going to meet at Boom, and how this audience can be distinct from all other audiences at most other summer festivals.

The festival does not have a firm date, year after year. It's the full moon week, fitting in July or August, which dictates when Boom will happen each year. It is so since 1997, when the Portuguese interior saw the Boom for the first time.

In 2004 the festival began to take ecology to heart, trying to cause a minimal ecological footprint during its course. The bathrooms do not use chemicals, water treatment is operated via biotechnologies, solar and wind energy are used, and this year the visitor, in addition to leaving his plastic in their recycle point, can even enjoy a piece printed in 3D, obtained with the recycled plastic product.

In September 2016 the Festival acquired its own land in order to make its own and more effective management. For this new 'Boomland' are provided cultural and well being poles, a careful environmental plan and planting or preservation of forest areas.

 

The program is immense, you can, and should, see it all here.

 

Boom Festival

July 22-29, full moon week

Lake Idanha-a-Nova

Castelo Branco

Around two and a half hours, by car, from Lisbon

 

Images taken from the event site

Last picture by Pierre Ekman