Every year, festivals and concerts are inevitably compared to their former selves. From the lineup to the crowd and the overall atmosphere, there’s always a conversation about how thing used to be and whether they were actually better before.
This year’s C2C Festival was no exception. Speaking with people who have attended for years, a recurring sentiment emerged: the festival has gradually moved away from its experimental roots, making room for recognisable names and a broader audience. This year, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Turin festival welcomed Robyn, Oklou, Arca, Shygirl, Kelela, The Avalanches, and more. And we’re certainly not complaining. Having experienced fewer editions myself, I can’t claim to know exactly what C2C Festival used to be, but after spending Friday and Saturday at Lingotto, I found myself questioning whether reaching a wider audience necessarily means losing the experimental identity that made C2C Festival what it is.
It’s also worth remembering that almost half of this year’s lineup featured artists who had already played at C2C Festival years ago, sometimes more than a decade earlier. In that sense, the 25th anniversary felt a bit like a family reunion. After all, when you celebrate such a big milestone, you want your whole tribe around you. And there must be something pretty special about welcoming back artists you championed years ago, only to see that some of the kids have grown up to become legends in their own right.
I also think that this debate needs to be placed in a wider context: at a time when the rising cost of living is bringing people into the streets, access to culture is becoming an increasingly pressing issue. With rent, groceries and everyday expenses taking up a growing share of people’s income, attending a concert is no longer always a spontaneous decision. Music hasn’t lost its audience, but audiences are being forced to become more selective about where they spend their money.
The live music industry reflects this contradiction: while major tours continue to attract enormous crowds, smaller venues, independent promoters and festivals face mounting financial pressures. Rising production costs, artist fees and the increasing expense of touring make it harder to take risks, especially when ticket sales are far from guaranteed.
Within this context, the presence of an artist like Robyn on C2C Festival’s lineup deserves a more nuanced reading. For some, booking an internationally recognised popstar represents a departure from the festival’s avant-garde identity, but does popularity automatically exclude experimentation? And could a more familiar name also provide an entry point into a musical world that audiences might otherwise never explore?
Someone buying a ticket to see Robyn might end up discovering an artist they had never heard of, and that is part of what makes festivals culturally valuable: they create connections between artists, genres and audiences.
Of course, financial sustainability shouldn’t become an excuse for abandoning artistic ambition, and criticism around ticket prices, accessibility or organisational shortcomings remain legitimate, regardless of the economic climate.
C2C Festival might have changed over the years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has lost what made it interesting in the first place. Perhaps, being experimental today isn’t exclusively about presenting the most obscure artists, but also about creating the conditions for musical discovery to happen, especially when those spaces are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
C2C Festival might not be the same festival it was 10 years ago. Whether that evolution represents progress or compromise is open to debate but what remains undeniable is the importance of having a festival in Italy capable of bringing together international artists, experimental music and audiences from different backgrounds. In an increasingly precarious cultural landscape, that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Rather than questioning whether C2C Festival is still avant-garde enough, maybe we should be asking how festivals can keep supporting experimental music when culture itself is becoming a luxury.
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