We all know about the original Woodstock: three days of peace and music (Jimi Hendrix! Janis Joplin! Sha Na Na!) brought half a million hippies and half-nekkids to this old guy’s upstate farm to get groovy with mud, tents and eternal bragging rights. The contact buzz was contagious, and the spirit of a decade was captured.
Ah, the good old days, right? Well, music and communal ideals are set to thrive and jive together in Sonoma, where the three-day Harmony Music Festival (June 12-14) has got the spectrum covered. Eco-focused skater boys in a skateboard competition? Check. Healing Sanctuary and Wellness Pavilion? Check. Music as oxygen, from India.Arie to Bad Brains to Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars? Oh, and keeping the groove kosher is a ‘Shabbaton’ Sabbath service – with kosher meal – courtesy of Matisyahu.
Maybe this kind of multi-culti flower must first bloom north of San Fran. The old fruit-farm acres of Sonoma’s three valleys are still where wine pilgrims come to plant their dreams. One of the sponsors of The Harmony shindig is Kokomo wines (Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama…), a vineyard founded a few years ago by two Indiana boys.
Even if you can’t ditch it all and cruise up the 101, open a bottle of wine from the Sonoma’s Dry Creek, Alexander, or Russian River valleys in celebration of big dreams under summer skies, grapes that are not wrathful, sing-along choruses, and music that lingers.
For more on the Harmony Festival, go to www.harmonyfestival.com.