Coachella by the numbers
According to the official Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival press release, 165 acts will be migrating to the desert for two weekends of music in April.
They will be commuting from exotic locales as far away as Tokyo, Japan (XJapan) and Lagos, Nigeria (Wizkid), to present their best work for Southern California hipsters, influencers, connectors, Instagram stars and would-be celebrities.
Unless you’re a tastemaker, you may come up blank when learning that artists including Buscabulla, Otoboke Beaver, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Elohim will perform. Who can know all of them, let alone what they sound like?
Yet taken as a whole, they and the dozens of other performers represent the tastes and proclivities of forwardthinking music culture as a whole.
So who are these artists? Good question.
Of the total number of acts, 102 are from the United States, 15 are British (King Krule, Jessie Ware, Jorja Smith and Jamiroquai, among them), seven are French (check out Busy P and Carpenter Brut), five are Canadian (one, the Weeknd, is a headliner). The lone Korean is electronic producer Peggy Gau. South Africa will be represented by the ridiculously inventive producer Black Coffee.
After a few disastrous years in which women performers were notably underrepped on the festival circuit, the promoters adjusted. Forty-seven acts are women or feature woman singers. (the majority of acts are still men).
Is rock dead? Not if the 40-or-so acts strumming on guitars — Oh Sees, the War on Drugs, the Fidlar and St. Vincent among them — have any say in it.