'I've never ever seen anything like it' Pharos is 'amazing, ' say fans. Photo / supplied
The artist, Donald Glover, took the stage sometime after 8.50pm. That was the time when I had to turn off my phone and put it in a bag that had to remain sealed throughout the duration of his performance as Childish Gambino.
There were a lot of rules in place for his Pharos Festival, some of them contradictory. You had to download the Pharos app to buy your e-ticket and take your phone to the festival to show your e-ticket. But then you had to put your phone in a bag. You couldn't have your phone out in the big, white dome where the show was held because it was, Donald Glover told us during his performance, an experience not a concert.
On the revolving door into the dome was a sign that said the show was being filmed for commercial use and passing that point signified you were okay with being part of that. Afterwards, on YouTube, I watched a clip from a Childish Gambino performance at the Infinite Energy Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in September that wasn't a Pharos Festival. All around the auditorium were people holding phones up to video the act. As Donald Glover did his jerky dance along a catwalk, he looked like a man facing the paparazzi on a red carpet.
The dome at the Pharos Festival was circular. Without the 3000 people and the round stage in the middle, you could have walked across it in about 20 seconds if you weren't dawdling. Not all the doors into it revolved. At some entry points there were two sets. You had to walk through the first in a group of about 10 people and wait till they had been closed behind you before you were allowed through the second. I have read that this airlock-style entry was to keep the dome inflated. I don't know if this is true.
Some people who went on Friday night complained on social media - after getting back their phones - about the queues to get into the dome. I waited for about 30 minutes. It was a mild evening, the rain had stopped and, to start with, there was a peachy purple blush of a sunset over the Hunua Ranges behind me.
Most people wore at least some green clothing. Ticket holders were told: "Please dress in your frequency color. It isn't a requirement." Everyone had the same frequency colour - green.
I wore a sensible, warm, olive green jacket over a khaki green T-shirt. Lots of people were more flamboyant. One person was dressed as Luigi, a character from the Mario series of video games who has a green hat. Others wore cheap, green, stick-on plastic jewel shapes on their cheeks.
Around the inside of the dome, perhaps every 10 metres or so, was a small white light about 3 metres up. As we waited for the American Grammy award winner, Donald Glover, to start his show, bursts of hexagonal silver lights were projected, every so often, onto the apex and sides of the dome, designed to emulate a discotheque mirrorball.
You couldn't take any liquids into the dome, not even the Pharos-branded water canteens that cost $25. But you could smoke cannabis because lots of people were. To the right of me a man howled like a wolf every time the mirrorball lighting effect was deployed. Behind me a group of young men sang the New Zealand national anthem in te reo Maori and then in English. No one joined in and it petered out at the climatic line of the latter version. There was a short, more popularly communal chant of Gam-bi-no, Gam-bi-no.
When the actor, comedian, director, DJ, rapper, singer and writer, Donald Glover, appeared, the top half of his body was naked and the bottom half clad in trousers and possibly shoes. He had a bushy beard and looked like he did in the video for the gently subversive single This Is America. The trousers looked lighter than the ones in the video and I don't think there were buttons at the fly.
Several musicians were stationed at fixed points on the circular stage. At various times in the 18-track show, other dancers, rappers and vocalists emerged from somewhere I couldn't see. The fit and toned Donald Glover's kinetic performance was very impressive. He went round and round the outside of the stage, like a hamster on a wheel.
The first song was called Algorithm. It began with a section that sounded like a hymn. It went: "As we stand together/promise me/that we'll teach the children/that we must be free." The congregation went wild. Then a loping percussive beat kicked in and Donald Glover spat some rhymes with good diction. Everyone lost their shit.
There was another new track, All Night, before the Vitamin D confection of Summertime Magic. Like all the songs, it was accompanied by complementary visuals sprayed across the roof and walls of the dome. For Summertime Magic we broke out of a cave into the light of a jungle with pink birds flying over a river. It was like a DVD extra from Avatar.
The set continued with two tracks from Donald Glover's second studio album as Childish Gambino, Because the Internet. They were stripped back and more traditional hip hop compared to the fried funk and wobbly soul that characterises the follow-up Awaken, My Love!
There was a lot of excitement when Donald Glover thanked everyone for making the effort to see "L'll old me" at a regional park about an hour's drive from central Auckland at that time on a Saturday night. There was a lot of love when he said there weren't many places left like New Zealand and that it was so green.
There were a lot of changes of pace and style in the set, reflecting Donald Glover's efforts to reinvent his musical oeuvre. Another new song, Saturday, sounded like prime Jamiroquai, with a nifty vocal phrase that reminded me of Michael Jackson's Rock With You.
The mood in the dome appeared to rise and fall with the change in musical styles. There was lot of energy for This is America and the penultimate track IV. Sweatpants. The final song, Redbone was a mass sing-and-dancealong as Donald Glover saved perhaps his most popular song till last.
In a wise profile published by The New Yorker in March, Tad Friend wrote " … Glover said that he thinks of reality as a program and his talent as hacking the code: 'I learn fast—I figured out the algorithm.' Grasping the machine's logic had risks. 'When people become depressed and kill themselves, it's because all they see is the algorithm, the loop,' he said. But it was also exhilarating. When he was ten, he said, 'I realized, if I want to be good at P.E., I have to be good at basketball. So I went home and shot baskets in our driveway for six hours, until my mother called me in. The next day, I was good enough that you wouldn't notice I was bad. And I realized my superpower.'"
The profile continued: "Is there anything you're bad at? 'To be honest, no. Probably just people. People don't like to be studied, or bested.' He shrugged. 'I'm fine with it. I don't really like people that much. People accept me now because I have power, but they still think, Oh, he thinks he's the golden flower of the black community, thinks he's so different.' He laughed. 'But I am, though! I feel like Jesus. I do feel chosen. My struggle is to use my humanity to create a classic work—but I don't know if humanity is worth it, or if we're going to make it. I don't know if there's much time left.'"
Donald Glover named his Pharos Festival after the Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World. Over its three nights in New Zealand it will have attracted 9000 people, many of them under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, to a big tent in a muddy field to listen to zeitgeist-influencing music created by a very talented man. I had two lagers.
In the 60s and 70s this would have been a "happening", a term that pre-dates that period but which then became popular to describe an event or performance that could be considered art. In 2018 it was an "experience" that cost US$150 ($221) per ticket. Parking cost $40, shuttles from Auckland $32. As well as those Pharos-branded canteens, you could buy a glow-in-the-dark Pharos mask for $45.
The visuals were excellent, particularly when they broke out the lasers towards the end, although at times there was too much light. The sound, from where I was standing, was a soupy mess that did a huge disservice to the musicianship on show and smoothed out the stylistic and tonal nuances of the recorded versions of the songs.
As I left the dome, to have the bag containing my phone undone, to hand in the bag, to walk across the squelchy surface of Pharos Village (a collection of food and drink outlets, a large merchandise stall and a small second stage where a lonely DJ played hip hop), to return to my car and to drive the dark and twisty roads home, a voice that sounded female but also like it had been generated by a computer thanked us for coming. It reminded us that shuttles back to Auckland would be leaving at midnight and invited us to go to the theatre where we could watch a sneak preview of a new project by the film-maker, Donald Glover. An article on the internet suggests the film is called Guava Island and co-stars Rihanna. At the time it sounded like Glover Island.
I'm very glad I went.
The latest entertainment news from NZ Herald Chief Lifestyle and Entertainment Reporter, Jenni Mortimer.