Why You Love Music Festivals, According to Science

Conjure for a moment the feeling of a perfect summer day. The trees are fully leafed out. The western sky is filled with changing light. Your friends and neighbors are gathering on the great green lawn of your town park, where communal tables await. A favorite band is playing while kids run around and their parents take a long moment to feel the breeze coming in off the mountains.

After a long winter and rainy spring, it’s easy to forget how good it feels to be outside with friends, unleashed from our devices and our four walls. The music fills our bodies, its rhythm melding with a deeper-time cycle of day-to-night, seasons changing, the imperceptible warble of a planet spinning gently on its axis. That feeling is calling us.

It’s hard to explain why the trifecta of nature, music, and community is even more happy-making than the sum of its parts, though science offers some clues. The 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim coined the term “collective effervescence,” which sounds like a denture cleaner but is really about the heightened state of social energy, a sense of sacredness and connection we feel during shared experiences like rituals and celebrations. Recent studies have found that listening to live music with others fosters unity and joy, leading to long-lasting improvements in well-being.

Similarly, spending time outside makes us less focused on ourselves and more in tune with others and the natural world. Research tells us that when we enjoy “nearby nature,” the kind we find in city parks, we’re more likely to feel happy, improve our attention spans, fend off depression and anxiety, and forge the bonds that support us and help us regain a bit of social optimism. Not surprisingly, there’s a dose curve to this kind of medicine. People who spend more time in nature are more likely to report increased satisfaction with their lives. The message is clear: time outside makes us healthier and happier, while also making us kinder to each other.

But in many ways, getting outside is harder than ever. Our obligations and distractions keep us inside, and with so many of us at our desks or on our couches, it’s not as much fun out there as it used to be. Back in his day, our perceptive friend Durkheim, the sociologist, described a growing purposelessness that people felt in the wake of industrialism, which pulled us off the land and into factories. Today, our digital lifestyles led former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy to declare a crisis of loneliness in 2023. Our species has never lived a life quite like this before: often separated from each other, burrowed inside away from sunsets, wild animals, and the brilliant night sky. We’re living in the middle of the largest mass migration in human history—the migration indoors.

No wonder our need for fresh air and social connection has never been greater. Our brains and bodies yearn for collective effervescence. We want lives filled with meaning, purpose, and the kind of adventures we find when we put down the screens. Interest in outdoor culture, sports, travel, and concern about nature’s resiliency is at a record high.

Feeling joy in the outdoors is a fundamental human right. Helping people get there is Outside and REI’s shared mission and passion. And in this moment, finding community and belonging in nature is more important than ever.

That’s why Outside partnered with REI Co-op and Capital One to create the second annual Outside Festival this coming May 31 to June 1 in Denver’s Civic Center Park. Here’s what you’ll find there: incredible bands like Khraungbin and Lord Heron performing on a stage framed by the Colorado Rocky Mountains; inspiring conversations with elite outdoor athletes, activists, and change makers; riveting adventure (and misadventure) films; climbing walls; health and wellness activities like yoga and cold plunges; games for kids and grownups; demos of the best new outdoor gear; an entire village of travel experts ready to help you plan your next journey; amazing food, and—most importantly—thousands of people like you, delighted to be outside together under the western sky.

So let’s do it. Let’s listen to that feeling that’s calling us. Let’s fall in love again with living things and with each other. Let’s orient toward the rhythms of music and nature and celebrate the happy fizz of togetherness, outside.