The news that the annual Pitchfork music festival is no more in Chicago sucked some of the soul out of this struggling city.
For two decades the three-day festival in Union Park in July was a highly anticipated affair for indie music lovers (and music lovers of all kinds) not just in Chicago, but throughout the Midwest. Local music fans were treated to shows by artists before they became big names, such as Vampire Weekend (2008), Kendrick Lamar (2012) and Charli XCX (2019), as well as appearances by stars like Wilco.
What made the festival special for so many years was that it was curated by folks who lived here; wrote and worked for the influential online music publication; and thought of Chicago as an integral part of their indie scene. Pitchfork was alternative in nearly every possible way as compared with massive, big-money events like Lollapalooza and Coachella.
Locally owned for years, Pitchfork (the company) was acquired in 2015 by New York-based Condé Nast, known for its stable of glossy magazines like GQ. It seemed an awkward marriage from the start, and in retrospect it’s remarkable the festival lasted as long as it did. The writing was on the wall for the event when earlier this year Condé Nast folded Pitchfork into GQ and laid off more than 10 Pitchfork editors and staffers.
It would be nice to know more about the reasons for Condé Nast’s decision. Is the company moving the festival to some other city or simply pulling the plug? Does this say something about doing business in today’s Chicago or not? So far, all we have is the company’s cryptic statement disclosing the bad news. Hopefully, we’ll learn more.
In the meantime, we’re mourning. We attended multiple Pitchfork fests and, each and every time, what struck us about the experience was the positive vibe. Music lovers of all generations felt comfortable; we rarely saw attendees who’d been overserved. The scale of the event was big enough to attract great artists and intimate enough to feel like those musicians were part of the community that had gathered.
That’s rare. And it was Chicago’s. And now it’s gone.
Pitchfork’s end comes at a bad time. For a cash-strapped city government, the revenue loss bites more than it would in better times. The success of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration’s frantic scramble this year to keep Riot Fest, another beloved music festival, from decamping to the suburbs now looks even more important.
But Pitchfork’s demise also hits us where it hurts even more; it’s a blow to our identity. The festival injected an undeniable dose of cool into Chicago — as if you’d planted a little Asheville, North Carolina, Austin, Texas, or Athens, Georgia, in the middle of the nation’s third largest city for a long weekend.
We’ll miss it.
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