The beat never stopped at the Bass Coast electronic music and arts festival that wrapped up its second straight year in Merritt on Monday.
Festivalgoers danced and mingled throughout the days and nights in outfits ranging from the mundane to the insane.
One woman wore a colourful skirt made of a medley of feathers with a large, purple beak on her nose and round, black sunglasses to complete the ensemble as she danced the night away on Saturday.
When perusing the festival grounds for a couple of days, it’s clear people were there to be free from the rigours of everyday life and explore their social liberties.
Around the festival grounds, people sway back and forth in hammocks, smoke from hookahs, dance to the beat of music in any direction their bodies take them, contort into various yoga poses, hoola hoop with zeal and expand their minds through seminars with titles such as Healing with Essential Oils or The Business of Doing What You Love.
Though it attracts a predominantly a younger-looking crowd, Bass Coast isn’t a festival reserved for any single generation.
There were still a few salt and pepper coloured heads in the crowd mixed in with the 20-somethings.
Espirito Santo Mauricio, 50, hails from the Vancouver area and has been to four out of the six Bass Coast festivals, but this was her first one in Merritt.
A Tribe Called Red played the main stage with a hoop dancer.
Mauricio said she wasn’t an avid festivalgoer in her youth. Married at age 18, she didn’t start attending music festivals until she was in her late 30s.
Twenty-two-year-old festival attendee Marie (who did not wish to give her last name) came from Edmonton to experience her first Bass Coast, which was also one of the first music festivals she’d ever been to.
“I like it. It’s chill and it’s fun. Everybody’s really nice,” she told the Herald.
Others at Bass Coast were seasoned festivalgoers.
River Easton, from Calgary, helped with lighting and media at his second Bass Coast. Easton has attended 11 music festivals so far this year and became an avid festivalgoer when he decided he wanted a change in his life.
“I used to work a nine to five and then at one point I was like, ‘You know what, I want to go to some music festivals,’ and I went and I just ditched my life and I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to make this my life.’ Now I go travel around, going to music festivals, working for the festivals,” Easton said.
He said Bass Coast has been the most exciting of the events he’s been to so far.
Nova Han of the Bubble Gutter urban clowning dance company based in California attended and performed at her first Bass Coast over the B.C. Day long weekend. With a smile and a little laugh, she said Bass Coast is “typically Canadian.”
“The wacky Canadians — which we love — these Canadians are just so free-spirited. They wear what they want to wear that’s fun and makes them feel alive and liberated and it’s just really great to be around,” she said.
When asked if this wasn’t the case in California, Han replied with another laugh that in California, everyone is focused on looking cool.
Han herself was wearing a trucker hat tipped slightly to the side and a bright orange chain necklace.
About 3,000 people gathered at this year’s event, which was housed closer together for a more intimate feel and closer proximity to shops, food vendors and music stages.
“I feel like Bass Coast is an opportunity for a lot of people to let loose,” Easton said. “A lot of people that come here don’t go to a lot of festivals. This gets to be their one, big festival of the year, and I feel like that gives people the opportunity to just let go and get into it.”
