On The Caribana and Bad Sound Design

Reading Time: 5 minutesThis morning I noticedd that a wine Cave is having an event where they will make noise but it will stop at 22:00 because the law requires them to stop at that time. In the 21st century anyone can buy a loud sound system that could fill a village with noise pollution, and that’s one of the problems with modern life.

For the last four nights I have been unable to sleep before two to three in the morning because the local music festival, the Caribana had their speakers on so loud that I could hear them despite having two fans on full power, laptop speakers at full volume and even airport hearing protection.

Amateurs will make the excuse that it has to be loud so that everyone can hear the music, especially at the middle of the crowd. They say that they can’t place speakers differently because of sound delays. That’s a lie. Look at cinema multiplexes. They have 8 or more speakers on each side of the room and they’re loud, but not so loud that it bleeds into the adjoining cinema room.

Last night there was so much sound bleed from the event that I could hear when the animateur was presenting the next band. This gives you an idea of just how awful the noise pollution was.

## Why Do I Call it Awful?

There was a time when music festivals were accoustic. You would have people with musical instruments and they would play on stage, and those at the event could hear the music but in the village next door you had peace and quiet. In Spain and other countries people have bought very loud systems. They’re so loud that if you’re in a night club, or a village party you’re deafened. Sound systems have become powerful, but people have not been taught to keep them safe.

## Airports and Cars

People complain about the noise of airports and cars. They want planes to be as quiet as hot air balloons, and they want cars that are as quiet as bikes, but they don’t want their freedom to drive a car to be taken over by other people and their freedom to ride bikes safely.

Give those same people a loud speaker or a music festival, and suddenly noise pollution is fantastic, orgasmic, welcome. If noise pollution is disguised as music people are fine with it.

## The Fête De Genève et Al

When I went to the Fête de Genève et Al noise pollution had to stop at 22:00 so that those that had to work could sleep. When I went to the IFSC World Cup Climbing event in Villars sur Ollon we had to go into silent Disco mode at 2200. The same is true at the World VR Forum quite a few years ago in Crans Montana.

## The Triple Standard

If you mow your lawn at lunchtime in certain villages you will get in trouble for it. If you do anything noisy on Sundays you will get in trouble for it. If you want to fly an ULM for a few minutes in Switzerland you will be fined because it’s illegal.

Despite all of these strict, and to a large degree, fantastic rules, some swiss villages are fantastically quiet. You can hear nature, rather than humans.

## The Music Festival Contrast

Caribana and Paléo break these rules. They make noise from Wednesday until Sunday from the mid day sound tests to the 3am concerts. Plenty of people complain, not like I do, but by scheduling to leave for the week of music festivals. These fatalists prefer just to take a holiday, rather than fight against noise pollution.

I would flee too, but as I said earlier, if there are Fiestas at the same time as you are in Spain or other festivals elsewhere then fleeing for silence backfires. The noise pollution will follow you.

## The Social Cost

There is a social cost to noise pollution and depriving people of sleep. Instead of waking at 6am they wake at 0930. Instead of planning to go to the lavaux slow up they plan nothing. On Thursday I felt so sleep deprived that it felt dangerous for me to drive to shop for food. I managed a lazy afternoon walk yesterday. Today I would have got up at 7 to drive to have breakfast with people, if I had not been kept up until after 2am.

## The Emotional Distress

I love the sound of clattering rain, thunder and lightning. I love the sound of strong winds hitting the roof under which I sleep. These are natural and make sense. We can’t control nature.

In contrast I hate noisy music festivals, not because I dislike festivals but because, if they had professional sound engineers rather than amateur arlecchini, and if they invested in a proper sound system, then they could fill the Port de Crans with enough sound for the crowd to hear, without neighbouring villages suffering from the spill of sound.

In the 70s and earlier it made sense for music festivals to be loud and affect several villages, but in 2024 you can go into silent disco mode after 22:00. You can also add more smaller speaker stacks, to ensure that people can hear the concert, without flooding a dozen neighbouring villages.

The cruelest paradox of all is that the stages, and crowds at Caribana are tiny. It’s not the Paléo Grande Scène stage. It is a tiny crowd, with huge noise.

It’s made worse by the wind blowing in the wrong direction for the entire duration of the event. The wind blew from the festival towards where I’m sleeping.

## Rural But Not Empty

There is the notion, from city dwellers that no one lives in villages, but that’s wrong. There is the notion that if you make noise in the countryisde it’s fine. It isn’t. If you make noise in town there is background noise so the noise you make is drowned out. In a village if the base noise is silence, then all noises are noticable.

If you make noise for 8 hours a night you keep birds awake, you keep mammals awake. You stress horses and more. The stables near Paléo are emptied during Paléo. Birds nest by the Caribana lake side.

The car parks are agricultural fields, and cars leach hydrocarbons down into the soils that are then used for crops, either for human consumption or animal consumption.

## And Finally

What I really struggle to understand is how a country, reputed for being so quiet, can allow for festivals to be so loud and disruptive for entire weeks at a time. Four nights for Paleo and Caribana. That’s eight days without sleep.

I tried contacting the festival last year, to let them know of the problem, with no positive follow up and I considered complaining again this year but decided to block the event on FB and IG instead. The Social media manager can’t help me, but you can.

If you feel the same way as I do about noise pollution from summer music festivals then we should let it be known. We should form a pressure group to force festivals to modernise, not to pollute the landscape with noise as they do for four weeks in June with the Caribana, and four days in July with the Paléo.

I am not calling for a cancellation of music festivals. I am calling for silent discos after 22:00, or if not 22:00 then midnight. I am calling for a redesign of music festival speaker stacks so that the festival has good sound, but that neigbouring villages can sleep.

If I am lucky I will finally get a normal night of sleep tonight.