On April 2nd, Bacchanal held its first in-person concert since 2019. To learn more about what went on behind the scenes this year and get a closer look at how Bacchanal works, I interviewed co-president Mila Prest. Mila was one of the only members of Bacchanal’s E-Board that had actually experienced a pre-Covid Bacchanal.
Why did you join Bacchanal?
I joined in my freshman year. It was the first club meeting I ever went to at Columbia and it turned out to be the club I spent all four years obsessing over. My older sister used to go to Columbia and she told me that Bacchanal is the only fun that this campus ever does, so I was like, I kinda want to see the only fun thing Columbia ever does.
And it’s true. There’s no other day where you feasibly can have that many people on the lawns, actively enjoying themselves. All of the lawns are booked out specifically for that purpose. It’s a defining moment at Columbia.
What was it like being the Co-President this year?
I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but it ended up being a lot of work in a very, very condensed time frame. Which is something I don’t think Bacchanal had ever had to deal with before. I knew it was something we could do; it was more like, how are we going to pull it off and in a way that could be copied in successive years.
Why was it more condensed than in the past?
Until 2020, Bacchanal had historically been hosted on campus. So the timeline for that is that you know who the vendor is going to be because you’ve been working with them forever. The lawn spaces are booked out a year in advance so you know the dates. A lot of the big scheduling/planning things are already taken care of by November. By December usually, they’ve secured an artist and the contracts are finalized by January-February.
We weren’t able to do the artist contracting process until February of this year, which is kind of crazy considering it takes a lot of back and forth for a contract to be approved by the university. It also takes at least a month for a vendor profile to be created, which is needed to pay performers. So we were like so far behind. Finding artists was also a lot harder because we were only able to start reaching out to agents with offers until February, so we had a lot of offers rejected because artists were just not available. We signed the last contract on March 18, and the concert was April 2.
Why couldn’t you start the process until February?
Just due to delays from Omicron, our contract with Terminal 5 was delayed and our advisors told us we shouldn’t send out offers until we had secured the venue. It’s a lot cheaper to host it at Terminal 5 and we didn’t want a situation where if Terminal 5 had fallen through and we had to revert to campus, an artist we booked could no longer be in our price range. Even virtual Bacchanal was very difficult with the contracting because the university payment is really problematic, for all clubs and events, not just us. Up until the last minute, we were worried one performer wouldn’t perform because of delays with their payment (which is understandable).
How do artist decisions usually work?
So the way it usually works is we do a lot of crowdsourcing from our G-body and from there we compile like hundreds of artists that people are listening to and like in a master spreadsheet. Then we start contacting agencies and look through their talent rosters and see who else they represent. From there, it’s just about seeing who’s available and getting quotes to build lineup space based on our artist budget.
As the president, what did you personally have to do on the day of this year?
Me and six of the members of the artist rider team, which are just members of G-body there to help out on the day, we got to T5 for load in which is at 11am, just making sure everything was there that needed to be. I was basically a production manager which I’ve never had to do before. I was there until 2:30, and then I went up to campus to see what was happening with the on-campus piece, which was phenomenal to see. I was really happy to see that everyone was out on the lawns having fun. I got back to T5 to watch the final sound check at 5.
Are you happy with how it went this year?
Yeah, I am. Up until the first performance, I had no idea what to expect. We had also just received so much hate, so I wasn’t sure. But I was definitely happy. I was happy to see that, regardless of all the obstacles we had, we were able to put on something of that caliber. And the venue was so nice to us—like, at the end they told us it was one of the best shows they’d ever seen or that had run that smoothly which was great to hear. It was just great to see everyone so happy. I love that shit.
As you said you guys received some backlash and there was controversy surrounding the concert this year, do you want to elaborate on some of that and how you guys dealt with it?
I think some of the things that were said about our lack of communication towards how the event was running and the fact that we announced stuff so late, that just came down to us not really knowing what was happening until February and we didn’t want to get people’s hopes up and have to go back on it. In the end I think people at least tried to understand that at the end of the day we are just students as well.
We as an E-board spoke about [Ramadan] every single day, figuring out “who do we talk about addressing this, how do we make sure it’s dealt with in a way that’s both sincere and adequately addressing the issues?” We didn’t know that this was an issue that had been brought up in the past and we tried to brainstorm ways to make the nighttime show accessible to people who were observing Ramadan. It’s something that we definitely would have handled better and addressed earlier.
Do you think that what you did this year will make a change going forward?
I think yes, because we have already spoken to the admin about it and the people taking over next year are already thinking about ways to avoid this happening in the future. I also think that the university itself is more aware.
Why did Bacchanal move off campus, why Terminal 5, and how do you think it compared?
In terms of how it compared, sound quality, 1000 times better. It looked better and sounded better. I think the artists were happier to not be dealing with terrible amplified sound outside in the middle of the day.
A lot of the decision to move off campus was just monetary. It was a lot cheaper to have it at Terminal 5 than on campus.
What about the capacity restrictions? I know it was challenging for people to get tickets.
Terminal 5 was chosen based on historical ticket data. Every year Bacchanal always only has 3000 tickets available. The only difference is on campus people sit on the lawns, there’s the idea that you can still walk through and hear it. So trying to find that balance that could host the amount of students we usually host and was close enough to campus that people would actually go was hard, and Terminal 5 ended up being the best option.
This wasn’t a decision we made impulsively. There’s been a lot of dialogue year by year with the university about what an off-campus Bacchanal would look like.
Do you see Bacchanal continuing off campus?
There will always be an element of Bacchanal that happens on campus. Whether it’s part of the concert or the whole concert that’s on campus depends.
Is there anything you heard people saying about Bacchanal this year that you want to respond to?
We are students—we’re not some like scary, shadowy university-run governing body. We are a club at heart. We all just happen to love music.
Anyone can come to our G-body meetings. We aren’t some secretive group. We discuss things really openly. There are lots of opportunities to get involved.
Bacchanal isn’t only the spring concert.
Last: we didn’t have Kesha as a performer and she dropped out. She’s only doing speaking gigs right now.