The Death of Rominimal and the lifecycle of festivals

“Rominimal is dead”—that was a text I received from a guy whom I was asking for party suggestions once. He is a very good DJ that I had seen playing once in Montevideo. It was July, 2019, and I was in Berlin trying to navigate the scene. That was just one month before my first Sunwaves, 26th edition, which blew my mind and made me write Rominimal is not dead.

It turned out that I attended three other editions. The second one was already a bit different. The stage setups felt a bit less interesting, and there were now fences that prevented you from accessing the seawater. The festival grew and caught enough attention to attract a more diverse but less unique public. It also attracted the police who was constantly raiding stages and searching people that they thought could have illegal substances. Musically it was still good, but also less unique and more like music I could find anywhere in Europe.

I still felt like returning, though. I love Romania, and Sunwaves was still delivering decently. I met people who I would find again in the following editions, which peaked in May 2024, the last edition I attended, when I had the company of tens of people I met along the way, which was amazing. But unfortunately, it was my worst edition in the declining series. You could call 10% of the music Rominimal, and a large portion of the audience didn’t seem very interested musically, but just wanted to get high.

For the first time, I didn’t feel like returning. I could the next August, but I instead decided to attend Waha, also in Romania. It was their 10th and final edition. Waha deserves its own article. It’s in the woods, further from civilization. Camping needed. Families with children, stages with acoustic music. Felt like a high-tech gypsy settlement, in a very good way.

Waha made a post explaining why that would be their last edition. What I got from it is that the festival just reached the end of its lifetime—even though it seemed to have reached peak production—and to keep itself alive, it would need to change its essence, thus becoming something else. They instead decided to acknowledge the end.

Festival goers get older, get children, go out less. They give space to younger people who have different taste. Artists also get older, their styles evolve. And this is all happening within cultural, political, and economical contexts that also constantly change.

Interestingly, the DJ I mentioned before told me in 2019, just before my first Sunwaves edition that “it’s past its timing, it’s too popular now”. At the time I couldn’t known better, but eventually took 5 years to get to the same conclusion. Different age, context and background, different experience.

I still find recorded sets of the unique Rominimal sound, so I think it’s alive, or being reborn somewhere. I’ll make an effort to find it before it’s too late again.