As Coachella kicks off another season of sun-drenched music and fashion, it’s important to remember the deep roots connecting modern music festivals to a vital lineage – the legacy of queer music festivals. These gatherings have been spaces of liberation, community building, and artistic expression for the LGBTQIA+ community, with a lasting impact that ripples through today’s festival scene.

This year, Coachella was very gay, with numerous rising stars like Renee Rapp, Ludmilla and other openly queer artists taking the stage and proudly embracing their queerness – proof that mainstream festivals are creating space for a broader range of identities. But we need to talk about the lineage of LGBTQ+ artistry and festivals that underscore the decades-long struggle for representation and visibility. Because tracing the history reminds us that today’s Coachella successes didn’t happen overnight.

So what’s the history? Festivals play an overlapping role with queer circuit parties, which bring queer promoters and themed events to nightclubs and other locations. Circuit parties are just one example of LGBTQ nightlife, which includes cabaret, bars, the ballroom scene, and house culture. If you add those ingredients into a pot, seasoned with the history of back to land movements where lesbian separatist land communities adopted the behaviors of large festivals like Burning Man or Woodstock, and where protest was coupled with moving our bodies outside of cities and into large open meadows to camp and play and dance, then you have the breeding ground for a history of queer music festivals.

The Michigan Women’s Music Festival, which ran for 40 years before its controversial 2015 closure, was a groundbreaking example. Despite its tumultuous end nearly ten years ago due to collisions related to trans exclusion, festivals like Michfest that focused on music festivals for women laid the groundwork for imagining a world of music and queerness all enmeshed into a single space where music and queerness could fully intertwine.

The battle to close the Michfest gates came with it a hole that may never be filled, though many continue to try. Its workshops, multiple stages, tented cities – family-oriented focus or sex den – bred iconic spaces, such as a woman of color tent, and custom-built structures and lessons of community-making that have become influential to queer music festivals across the world.

At queer festivals you are likely to find queer bodies, music, and more:

• Workshops – Michfest would hold dozens of workshops over the course of a week. Open to anyone with a ticket, workshops could range from breast sculpting, basket weaving, stilt walking, target throwing, journaling, chorus, zine-making, conversations on relationships or identity, writing groups, or training on clitoral massage.
• Stages – Volunteer festival goers would organize for a month or more prior to the opening of the gates, chopping wood, installing planks to a building irrigation amongst the ferns.
• Deep fashion – At queer music festivals, queers like to get dressed up, head to toe. The clothes may be fabric, or maybe paint and glitter, but the festies come to show up and show off. At Michfest, a parade was made for groups wanting to bedazzle – a gaia girl walk from the little ones, a parade for femmes, and of course butch strut to name a few of the ways folks would come to represent not only their latest fashions, but also their identities.
• Chosen family & intergenerationality – Come one and come all! All queer families look different, and the festivals were oftentimes a space for an entire family to enjoy. Aiming to share queer space with chosen and bio families, there was space made for running amazons of all ages, be it to crafts together, or for an age-specific parade down the center festival road.
• Volunteer power –  Queer festivals rely upon volunteer support. Any money raised or that comes from ticket sales are used most generally to pay the artists, sound equipment, infrastructure set-up, and advertisement costs. It’s summarized well in this video with a comical start made to fundraise for the 21st annual Iowa Women’s Music Festival ten years ago.

Past, present and future

While some festivals have ended, others continue to thrive or emerge. Here are some of the best to note from history:

• Ohio Lesbian Festival – The Festival was founded on the premise that lesbians and queer womyn need opportunities and spaces to recognize and support each other, to define their culture, to find our their strengths and to be empowered. Years ago the founding mothers made the radical political decision to use the word lesbian in the name of the music festival, at a time when it was not socially acceptable and generally unsafe to do so. The Ohio Lesbian Festival continued to carve out space created by lesbians, but was open for all women to enjoy, share community and connect in a rare and powerful way. The Ohio Lesbian Festival hasn’t officially closed, but COVID has stalled its momentum.
• Wigstock – As the AIDS crisis hit, music festivals became platforms for both mourning and activism. Events like Wigstock in New York City raised awareness and funds for crucial causes, blending artistic expression with political urgency. This cemented the understanding that queer music festivals could be vehicles for social change.
• Women’s Redrock Music Festival, Torrey, Utah – Launched in 2006, it was a beautiful venue among the red rocks of Utah and independent women making music is this unique small women’s music festival.

Here are some that are thriving now:

• Fernfest – Fern Fest is a summer music festival in Michigan specifically curated to drive connection and foster community for women, trans and non-binary folks, and those that live on the spectrum of the feminine spirit.
• Iowa Women’s Festival – Happening this June and 100% free, this one-day festival was founded in 1993 as the Iowa Women’s Music Festival, now back after a nearly ten-year hiatus. As an all-volunteer day-long event open to the entire community, the annual day-stage created a venue for local artists and queer community to gather in Iowa City.
• Stargaze Festival –  This August, Camp Timber Trails centrally located between Boston and NYC, is for ages 21 and over and is three days and two nights of a beautiful inclusive community of LGBTQ+ to dance in the middle of the woods, sleep under the stars, and immerse in the dreamlike interactive environment of artists, creators, and party goers.
• Ella International Lesbian Festival Visit Mallorca, Spain this August for days of art and culture and sports on a beautiful island. This festival features live performances, outside play, seaside excursions, and the opportunity to dance the night away with lesbians from around the world.
• SisterSpace – From its beginnings in the 1970s as a feminist women’s self-defense weekend, the SisterSpace Weekend Women’s Festival in Maryland has evolved into a 3-day women-and-nonbinary- sisters-only camping event featuring music, workshops, parties, crafts, sports, and all sorts of opportunities for socializing, learning, and having fun! SisterSpace Weekend Women’s Festival is held every year on the weekend after Labor Day.
• National Women’s Music Festival – Though it’s located inside of a hotel, don’t call this a conference; it is a festival, like any other! The fest is a multi-day musical and cultural extravaganza in Wisconsin this summer that is jam-packed with workshops, concerts, comedy, presentations, newly released films and videos, and even a keynote! Pets are allowed, which is the only time this hotel allows pets, because again, this is a festival and not a conference. All philosophies and politics are open for discussion, not mandated or judged.
• Queerchella Music Festival – The history of women’s festivals slowly became clear that queer was the new frontier for music festivals, not only in remote parts of the woods, but also in the center of large cities. In New York City is a monthly takeover of a LGBTQ nightclub 3 Dollar Bill.

Community, protest and the evolving festival landscape

Queer music festivals have a potent history of blending celebration with social justice advocacy. Street festivals worldwide harness music to fuel parades, marches, and powerful displays of resistance. Queer joy at these events becomes a defiant response to social injustices. However, it’s crucial to remain critical of celebratory events that can obscure urgent political struggles, as in the concept of “pinkwashing.” The 2013 die-in protesting Israeli pinkwashing poignantly illustrates this tension, reminding us that even within spaces of joy, protest persists.

Organizing festivals requires tremendous energy and resources, often relying on paid staff or dedicated leadership. Lisa Vogel’s leadership at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival is a notable example; beloved for her feminist vision, she ultimately made the difficult decision to close the festival in 2015. This highlights the ephemeral nature of festivals: some cease operations, some evolve, while others are newly born.

Today, queer circuit parties like Queerchella (NYC) bring elements of queer music festivals into the mainstream. Events like Coachella, while not explicitly queer, reflect the influence of their predecessors through inclusivity, diverse artist lineups, and a focus on self-expression through fashion and community building. Like its queer ancestors, Coachella has become a space for flamboyantly fierce fashion, artistic self-expression, and the building of communities based on a shared love of music.

Through these changing forms, queer festivals remain vital. They are sites of both joyful celebration and urgent protest, fueled by the enduring power of music, identity, and the freedom to fully express oneself. As you experience the energy of Coachella, remember the revolutionary spirit pulsing through the lineage of queer festivals – a spirit that reshapes the modern festival landscape and ensures spaces for vibrant community and continued activism.

Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is a Black lesbian archivist and librarian living in NYC. You can find her online at shawntasmithcruz.com.