Hardly Strictly Bluegrass makes no secret that visitors can expect things besides banjos at the annual music festival. Still, they may not have expected disco.
But in keeping with the theme of “quiet is the new loud,” this disco was a silent one. Visitors walked in, put on a set of noise-canceling headphones and began quietly gyrating to beats piped straight to their ears.
Silent discos — also called silent raves — have the energy of a dance club with the noise footprint of a laundromat. They’ve been around for a decade but have recently become more popular as technology has gotten cheaper and DJs have warmed up to the idea of pop-up parties that don’t end in noise complaints and, consequently, get broken up by the cops. Or in the case of music festivals, to offer a dance alternative without disrupting whoever is onstage.
HUSHConcerts, a DJ company based out of Treasure Island, put on this year’s event. From the outside, there was no four-on-the-floor, no pulsing bass, no sounds at all besides the general noises that come with a crowd: shuffling, heavy breathing and occasional flatulence. People mouthing the shapes of songs and moaning half-known lyrics. Then every few minutes a burst of spontaneous, synchronized clapping.
The silent disco had the semi-exclusive experience of a club, of sharing something personal in a very public place, and of watching people who were in on the joke while the other saps shuffled by.
Ironic, too, of course. In the middle of an event intended for the celebration of live acoustic music, a third space had wedged in, and with it, a hundred people shaking tail feathers to all the greatest hits of Earth, Wind & Fire.
Music gives dimension to dance, just as light pressing through a negative gives contours to a photograph.
Without the sound I couldn’t help but feel I wasn’t getting the whole picture and took up station among the still. The ones who did not dance, the rhythmless, were left to judge the joyous motion of those who could hear the music.
