Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) “Bass Camps” are artist residencies in major cities around the globe including Berlin, Montreal, Rome, Seoul and New York City. Bonnaroo was fortunate to host a five year Bass Camp residency, which allowed the festival to build a permanent compound on the grounds featuring state-of-the-art recording studios. The compound also served as an oasis where RBMA could host attending press, musicians, management and executives to educate the industry on their residency program.
Each year of the residency, RBMA hand picked approximately twenty musicians to live in Glamping Tents, record music in the studios, and attend lectures by music industry leaders. By day, the RBMA musicians spent time learning and collaborating. By night they took over festival dance stages spinning beats until sunrise.
To further interact with the Bonnaroo audience RBMA hosted a “Twerk it Out” class on the Solar Stage led by bounce musician Big Freedia.
In addition to the RBMA program, Red Bull was sold at all concession stands and, in a first of its kind partnership leading up to the festival, created a video game where Bonnaroo was the backdrop and players had to collect cans and other festival swag to score points. The top scores landed VIP tickets and accomodations at the festival.
