Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, US 22/4/2022

I have seen many big, established music festivals in Europe. Rock In Rio in Lisbon, Portugal was giant. Sziget in Hungary is an old-school, annual event. Some French ones have had a huge audience as well. Yet still, Coachella felt really special when I was finally there and saw it with my own eyes, the vibe was iconic. The place was absolutely enormous. It took me almost half an hour to walk from the taxi drop-off to the main entrance and then there was an equally long way from there to the main stage officially called the Coachella Stage. 

For artists it makes sense to perform late night simply because the audience is bigger that time. From my point of view seeing Mika in the afternoon was a total blessing. For so many years I’ve hoped to see him performing in daylight and now it finally happened and it was absolutely beautiful. Everything looks more beautiful in daylight. I saw the first weekend only streamed but got an impression the audience during the second weekend was more enthusiastic than during the first one and people seemed to come earlier as well. 

When Princess Nokia started the atmosphere was already quite nice considering she was the first performer. Her hip hop style music was not my genre but I liked her energy, I liked her shout-outs to gay and trans communities and I liked watching her dance group and seeing dancers in all sizes, not only one exact form like we so often see. Sharply after her performance Mika’s team appeared on stage. The schedules at festivals are tight so everything needs to be done quickly and professionally.

I’m doing mostly a photo report because I went to Coachella particularly for photos. It was such a dream come true to see Mika performing in daytime at an outdoor event, both to see his performance and to be able to take photos of him in all these beautiful colours. However, I think he managed to include something extremely essential in his performance - it represented him so correctly and was so amazingly successfully done - that I want to mention a few important points in words as well.

For me Mika’s music represent great depth and great lightness at the same time. I think about the themes in his songs in a very deep way. I can take just one sentence of the lyrics and then spend hours continuing the thought in my head. The themes in his music can be extremely serious but the main message is still always light. It says no matter how difficult times you go through, how difficult times the people close to you go through or how difficult times the world around you goes through, there’s still beauty in everything. There’s beauty in people, there’s beauty in love, there’s beauty in life itself. During each concert he creates something magical. No matter what’s happening outside the venue, inside we live magical moments. 

Now he was at Coachella, performing those songs I see as an endless source of thought and depth. We were in the middle of the desert, the weather was burning hot. He appeared on stage and suddenly the world was full of fresh colours and positive energy. He was smiling and seemed to genuinely appreciate the audience and the effort it made. He run to the left, he run to the right, he stood in the middle and spread his arms like wanting to hug the whole crowd. He climbed on the piano, took his jacket off, showed his incredible tattoo shirt, took the shirt off, danced, put on the other shirt showing the heart on it.

Everything looked absolutely beautiful. I loved the beautiful pale blue colour in his suit, I loved the tattoo motives in his shirt, I loved the fresh white and red top. I loved it how it he put the crown on his head and suddenly the background was full of stars like in Little Prince. During the next song the stage was in full bloom! The colours were absolutely stunning. I had thought in advance the animations look good but of course couldn’t know how good they can look in real life. The animations were the perfect background for his new outfits. He even had a new Mira Mikati cape with pale blue tones and flowers. During We Are Golden he danced round and round and then suddenly the show was over. He looked exhausted and out of breath but his eyes and smile told he was extremely happy and I was really happy as well and I thought wow how well this performance captured his personality, how well it could mix his music and the special magic around it. How well it expressed both the depth and the lightness, how much it spread his positive energy.

It felt really special to see this performance, much more special than I had thought in advance. Everything became even extra special when he later posted some of my photos on his social media. It was the sweetest, the most generous thing to do and for sure made this memorable event even more memorable to me. The last photo is one of my favourites. I love that face. I love that expression at the very moment when the show is over and he’s watching the audience. He did everything he could and it went well. More photos in my selected galleries.

Using Format