Last week started off with a bang as Lightning In A Bottle presented by The Do LaB kicked off the 2019 5-day music and arts festival in Central California. Lightning In A Bottle kicked off their annual festival with gorgeous spring sun shinning down on festival-goers. While, festival goers were initially apprehensive of this year's Lightning In A Bottle due to the festival's venue change to Bakersfield, California from Bradley, California and date change; Lightning In A Bottle out did themselves with a very well organized and highly interactive festival. The 5 day festival brought out headliners such as Santigold, Big Gigantic, Disclosure, Flying Lotus 3D, Gramatik, Lane 8, G Jones, Shiba San and more with roughly 20,000 participants taking part in this year's festival celebration.
The Do LaB successfully transformed Bakersfield's Lake Buena Vista grounds into a magical oasis with a wide variety of house, techno, DnB, bass and world music. The musical extravaganza featured 5 over the top stages: Lightning which included many heavy hitters including Santigold, Big Gigantic, and Flying Lotus 3D, and Disclosure, Thunder featuring acts 1788-L, Clozee, G Jones, Shades and more, The Grand Artique featuring acts such as Mlyk && Honey and Moodlite, The Stacks (formerly known as The Pagoda), Favela, Compass Music featuring wonderful world music including my favorite, Fanna-Fi-Allah which included Sufi Whirling Dervishes and the infamous Woogie stage which brought out a wide variety of house music producers like Lane 8, DJ Koze, Damian Lazarus, and Shiba San.
Photo by Don Idio
Not only was there an abundance of eclectic and inspiring music but LIB brought out a wide range of educational talks and discussions ranging from talks on sexual intimacy, the power of manifesting, environmental sustainability, and holistic nutrition. At this year's LIB there was also an abundant amount of yoga classes and meditation groups. My personal favorite meditative experience at Lightning In A Bottle was the immersive sound experience which had participants laying on the grass while listening and feeling the many different vibrations coming off of gongs, flutes and tibetan bowls fill their bodies creating a very relaxed state of mind.
Photo By Dorian Drislane
Besides the wonderful music and arts, the festival grounds at Bakersfield was very accessible and less difficult to navigate than previous years with mainly flat ground, less sand and dirt, an abundant amount of grass and camping space. Participants were also able to cool down in the Lake Buena Vista lake while still being able to hear the music coming off from the stages and jamming out to all of the sick beats coming off all while floating around inflatable toys.
Photo by Aaron Glassman
Photo by Jess Bernstein
The five-day festival came to an end with headliner, Disclosure throwing down a DJ set to close out Sunday night. Lightning In A Bottle remains one of best music and art festivals in California. What truly makes Lightning In A Bottle a complete success is not the music or the arts but the Lightning In A Bottle participants – the festival goers are what makes the festival the success it is with their generosity, compassion and overall care and love they have for one another. We cannot wait to see what The Do LaB has in store for 2020!
