Governors Island in the Summertime

Governors Island sits in New York Harbor between Manhattan and Brooklyn, a decommissioned military base turned public park, and in summer it briefly becomes one of the better arguments for leaving the apartment. The Full Moon Festival set up there—Vic Mensa, Kelela, ABRA, Connan Mockasin, Axel Boman, Donna Leake, Awesome Tapes From Africa, TOPS—a lineup that reads like someone’s very good taste made physical and placed on a ferry route.

That combination of artists is more interesting than most festival bills because it doesn’t have an obvious genre thesis. Kelela’s R&B and Connan Mockasin’s freewheeling psychedelia and Donna Leake’s DJ sets don’t share a sound—they share an atmosphere. Music that’s too careful to be casual and too strange to be background. You have to pay attention, which is the opposite of what most festivals ask of you.

The standard festival circuit runs on routine. The same fields, the same headliners cycling through on a two-year rotation, the same ritual of arriving dehydrated and leaving sunburned with a mediocre memory of a band you mostly already knew. There’s comfort in that, and I’ve done it enough times to understand the appeal. But Governors Island in July, water on three sides, a lineup with actual risk in it—that’s a different proposition.

I wasn’t there. I watched it unfold through other people’s photographs and felt the particular distant pleasure of knowing a good thing happened somewhere. Next time it runs, maybe.