Coachella: The Desert Becomes a City for a Weekend

The polo grounds ahead of you look unremarkable for most of the year: flat green turf, low mountains in the distance, the kind of landscape that reads as blank from the highway. For a few weeks each spring, they become one of the densest temporary cities in California.

The first Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was held here in October of nineteen ninety-nine. It was organized by Goldenvoice, a Los Angeles concert promotion company, on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club in Indio. The early editions were precarious. The financial model was uncertain. The format shifted. The festival postponed a year and came back in two thousand one with a layout and a booking approach that proved more durable.

What happened over the following decade was an acceleration that the promoters probably did not fully anticipate: Coachella became the most culturally legible music festival in the United States. Not the largest, not the oldest, but the one that functioned as an arbitration system for which artists had arrived at significance and which festival slot meant what. A headlining booking at Coachella carried a specific signal that a headlining booking at other comparable events did not.

The festival grew from one day to three, and beginning in two thousand twelve it has run across two consecutive weekends with the same lineup. The infrastructure erected and dismantled annually includes stages, food courts, art installations, and temporary utilities for hundreds of thousands of visitors, in a desert where the April temperatures require serious planning.

A polo field in Indio. Bought by ranchers in the early twentieth century. Converted to polo. Converted to music. The landscape accommodates what the economy requires of it, which is a California habit with a long history.