Atlas / Lists / 8 Wilderness Music Venues
· Editorial list · 8 venues

Music in the wild.

Eight venues where the wilderness is the room. Forests, deserts, lakes, mountains, dune amphitheatres. The atlas reads landscape as architecture.

The opposite of a concert hall is the open air. Wilderness music venues take their acoustic from the landscape: a forest absorbs treble, a desert returns nothing, a lake throws sound across the water, a mountain valley creates a natural amphitheatre. The Sonic Paths wilderness shortlist is the ten rooms across two continents where the landscape is doing the work.

The list

01
Gato Preto on stage at Nyege Nyege in Jinja, two performers mid-dance under a green laser

NYEGE NYEGE FESTIVAL.

KALAGALA FALLS · UGANDA · 0.61°, 33.18°

Kalagala Falls, Nile, Uganda. River acoustics and forest acoustics in one festival site. Six stages, dust in the air, the rapids as the bass line.

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TYPE · Wilderness Music Festival  ·  FREQ · Experimental · House · Afro-house
02
A large fire burning behind a row of arches at night

AFRIKABURN.

TANKWA KAROO · SOUTH AFRICA · -32.48°, 19.90°

Tankwa Karoo, South Africa. The most acoustically pure venue on this list. No reflective surfaces for 50km. Total silence between sets, total clarity inside them.

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TYPE · Desert Burn Festival  ·  FREQ · Electronic · Techno · Experimental
03
A tall red dune with a sharp shadowed ridge under a blue sky

SOSSUSVLEI DUNES.

NAMIB-NAUKLUFT NATIONAL PARK · NAMIBIA · -24.73°, 15.34°

Namibia. Dune 45, Deadvlei, Big Daddy. Sonic Paths' acoustic-environment entry. The Namib does not host concerts, it is one.

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TYPE · Natural  ·  FREQ · Ambient · Field Recording · Silence-led listening
04
A lantern-lit open-air restaurant with people at tables at night

BENEATH THE BAOBABS.

KILIFI CREEK · KENYA · -3.63°, 39.85°

Baobab grove, Kilifi, Kenya. Forest canopy with coastal sea-breeze. The baobabs do unexpected acoustic work, low-frequency absorption like nothing else.

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TYPE · Coastal Forest Festival  ·  FREQ · House · Afro House · Experimental
05
A singer in a bright jacket performing under a thatched roof at Lake of Stars

LAKE OF STARS FESTIVAL.

LAKE MALAWI · MALAWI · -14.02°, 34.84°

Lake Malawi. The water reflects sound across kilometres. The crowd on the sand, the stage on the beach, the bass on the lake. Most-cinematic festival site on the continent.

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TYPE · Lakeside Music Festival  ·  FREQ · Afrobeat · Folk · Electronic
06
Giant costumed puppets and a crowd behind a barrier

FESTIVAL SUR LE NIGER.

SÉGOU · MALI · 13.43°, -6.27°

Segou riverbank, Mali. Pirogues become floating viewing platforms. The Niger is wide and slow, kora music carries across the water.

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TYPE · Riverside Music Festival  ·  FREQ · Mali Blues · Bambara · Griot
07
A carved ice bar in blue light with a figure standing at the counter

THE ICE HOTEL CONCERTS.

JUKKASJÄRVI · SWEDEN · 67.85°, 20.59°

Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. The wilderness venue rebuilt every winter from frozen Torne river water. The ice church absorbs at -7C in a way concrete never does.

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TYPE · Ambient Ice Acoustic Experimental  ·  FREQ · Ambient · Choral · Neoclassical
08
Lava fountaining from Stromboli's crater at night

VOLCANO EXTRAVAGANZA.

AEOLIAN ISLANDS · ITALY · 38.79°, 15.21°

Aeolian Islands, Italy. Active volcano. Periodic eruption is the percussion. Sonic Paths takes Stromboli as proof that the room can be elemental.

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TYPE · Art and Music Festival  ·  FREQ · Contemporary Art · Performance · Electronic
· FAQ

Asked and answered.

Q.What is a wilderness music venue?
A wilderness music venue is a music site whose primary acoustic is the landscape itself, not built architecture. Forest, desert, lake, mountain, volcanic, or polar. The room is the geography. Examples in the Sonic Paths atlas: AfrikaBurn (Tankwa Karoo), Nyege Nyege (Nile rapids), Lake of Stars (Lake Malawi).
Q.What's the most extreme wilderness music venue in the world?
Sossusvlei (Namibian desert dunes) and Stromboli (active Italian volcano) both qualify. The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi (-7C concert hall carved from a frozen river, rebuilt every winter) is the most physically extreme inhabited venue in the Sonic Paths atlas.

More lists.

Editorial cuts of the Sonic Paths atlas.

All lists → Full atlas (153) → Journeys →