If you did not attend BUKU Music + Art Festival March 21 and 22 at New Orleans’ Mardi Gras World, you missed a great time! This was my second year at the two-day spring festival, and this year brought a feeling of euphoria and relaxation that kicked off my 2014 festival-season shenanigans. The BUKrewe seemed to take the advice of previous attendees as it was transformed into a festival even more tremendous than I could have anticipated. The shows I enjoyed the most were Chromeo, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Griz, The Flaming Lips, Beats Antique and Explosions in the Sky. Overall, every show had great energy, the crowd was truly warm, outgoing and friendly, and the festival grounds seemed more open, fresh and uncluttered.

Skream

This year BUKU provided a home for a much larger crowd, and its main entrance moved beside the Power Plant stage, which opened up a new grassy area for arts and crafts vendors in the small lawn outside the Float Den. Attendees listened to recorded music as they hung out in the midst of food, face-painting, and arts and crafts vendors, clothing, jewelry and more from High Flying Fancy, Anna Oraeau, Lady Beast Jewelry, White Guy Pad Thai and others. The new, small Back Alley stage also opened up more room, allowing guests to wander past the Float Den and look onto the Mississippi River; it provided chairs and steps where guests could relax, mingle and rest their feet. The only show we never got to see at the Back Alley was Skream. Does anyone know what ever happened to Skream?

The VIP 3-story S.S. BLU-KU boat attached to the river was grandiose, accommodating and high-energy. The bottom floor hosted an open bar with shows like Big Freedia’s Twerk Lesson, where everyone twirked with Big Freedia, while The Gaslamp Killer & Friends w/PresHall Brass+Khris Royal brought the funk. The second floor also seemed to have a small stage area with a bar and a private room behind it. The top floor opened up into the outdoor world with a refreshingly cool breeze facing the Mississippi River alongside the Power Plant stage, where main headliners such as Ellie Goulding and David Guetta performed. The weather that weekend was perfect: it was in the high 60s with a quiet river draft.

Chromeo

Chromeo was amazing on the Power Plant, playing their older hit songs “Fancy Footwork” and “Momma’s Boy” from the album Fancy Footwork and the new song “Jealous (I Ain’t With It),” which gave the crowd lively and positive vibrations as the sun set on Saturday. The Float Den, home to annual Mardi Gras floats, offered groovy EMD “trap” music and displayed the best onstage visuals. Griz, Bauuer b2b RL Grime, Paper Diamond and Glitch Mob all had vibrant, psychedelic screens with the entire crowd “getting jiggy” with each other. Beats Antique, who defines its music as a combination of “flamenco, Afro-beat and French Gypsy jazz,” hit the Ballroom beginning with some newer electronic tunes that were different yet amazing and funky, followed by their biggest hits “Catskillz” and more from albums Elektrafone, A Thousand Faces – Act I and others. A large, white blow-up bear popped out on stage at Beats Antique with the usual belly dancing; needless to say, that was one of my favorite shows.

Explosions in the Sky also graced the stage in the Ballroom drawing some tears from people as they played their most beautifully explosive and touching songs from albums The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and more. The Ballroom seemed to have a lot more room this year as guests could wander throughout the upstairs (although I believe this was available last year) with another bar and score a great seat behind a short fence facing down towards the stage. The Flaming Lips were amazing as always at the Power Plant stage with hit songs from At War with the Mystics, newer ones from Embyronic and, of course, the track that gets us all, “Do You Realize??” from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Although I do not think Wayne Coyne made his usual bubble entrance into the crowd, he now wraps himself in what looks like large, electric, hallucinatory tinsel that embraces most of the stage and changes from vivid, rainbow colors to whatever hue matches the mood as the band also played their album The Terror.

The Flaming Lips

Lotus (the Ballroom), Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (Power Plant stage), Tyler, the Creator (the Float Den), Chance the Rapper (the Ballroom) and others stood out as extremely high-energy and interactive shows throughout the weekend.

The stages had terrific sound quality and were spaced out far enough so that you could hear an act from the back of the crowd but not if you were at another show. There was plenty of room to move, dance, hula hoop, poi or whatever you wished, at every stage. Underneath the outdoors tarp in the center between all of the stages, there was always recorded music playing with people dancing, hula and fire hooping, congregating and making new friends mostly during the night shows when the air was cooler. Everyone was decked in extravagant and colorful hippie apparel with headpieces and bright, flashy, flowery attire. There was a large, 4-5 story spray-painting wall between the Float Den and the Mississippi River, where talented artists climbed throughout the festival, spray painting colorful and trippy images of musical symbolism, human silhouettes and other related BUKU themes. I also enjoyed the fact that there seemed to be more trash/recycling bins throughout the festival, which allowed for a much cleaner, less polluted vibe for everyone.

This year BUKU had a lot more food vendors with delicious fish tacos, pizza and more featuring Pie for the People, Efe’s Greek Food, Fireman Mike’s Kitchen, City Greens and others. The Grand Oaks Mansion (inner media lounge room) hosted a Happy Hour for Media on Saturday. It gave home to a large, clean bar and was draped in its entirety with faux and real tree branches, leaves, bushes and flowers, so that on first glance one might swear they were in an outdoors forest. Late-night festival attendees kept the party ragin’ both nights at Republic New Orleans and Howlin’ Wolf with BUKU after-parties featuring Paper Diamond, Holy Ghost!, Doctor P, Cookie Monsta and more; the shows were on the same block downtown and went on until  nearly 6 a.m., which was nice.

Overall, the festival was a ton of fun, with an amazing lineup in an unfortunately short span of time. I think it would have been nice had it been a three-day festival, as there was a lot of hustling from one place to another, since so many good artists played. There were water stations this year, which was a wonderful and necessary addition. It seems as though they added bathrooms this year, too, as I do not remember having to wait for very long; I also appreciate the soap and water stations outside of the Porta-Potties. There were more places to sit this year as the festival added Fort BUKU, a large mesh section near the entrance, and smaller mesh areas throughout the concrete grounds. The only main things I would change is that there were not many drink/alcohol drink options for general admission attendees, and the fact that the GA wrist bands were plastic, which my friends were sad about. Last year the wrist bands were cloth, and I know many people (including myself) hold onto theirs for keepsakes. Fortunately the media wrist bands were cloth, so I have something substantial to keep. I thought the food and art vendors were very cool, the people were friendly, New Orleans was crazy as always, and I could not have asked for a much better weekend. Go BUKU!

Chance the Rapper