A crowd cheers for The Roots. (Christopher Berkey for The New York Times)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–The Southern rock jam band Widespread Panic, which has been a Bonnaroo regular from the beginning, closed out the festival with its built-in paradox. Many of its songs (and borrowed ones, like Vic Chesnutt’s “Sewing Machine”) are about feeling unsure, out of [...]

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco performs during the fourth and final day of Bonnaroo.(Photo by Jeff Gentner/Getty Images)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–Wilco’s new album, “Sky Blue Sky” (Nonesuch), is relatively noise-free after the band’s two previous studio albums, which were laced with electronics and noise. Onstage at Bonnaroo, songs that began as gently strummed or picked folk-rock sprouted episodes [...]

Meg White and Jack White of The White Stripes performing on the final day of the festival.(Jeff Gentner/Getty Images)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–Now I get it. Years ago, when I saw the White Stripes in clubs, they struck me as a loud, unsubtle, monotonous remake of a remake: everything I had disliked about 1970’s blues-rock, reincarnated in artsy [...]

MANCHESTER, TENN.–The jazz composer, saxophonist, trumpeter and violinist Ornette Coleman, 77, collapsed during his Bonnaroo set. He was playing one of his tenderly quizzical ballad lines on alto saxophone when he toppled suddenly to the stage. A few minutes later, he was helped to his feet, sipped some water and was walked [...]

MANCHESTER, TENN.–Sunday was for the Bonnaroo diehards. The big mainstream headliners, Tool and the Police, were gone, and so were some of their fans. The
afternoon lineup leaned toward roots and blues–and, for some reason, songs about death. I started my afternoon with Mavis Staples, who recently released, “We’ll Never Turn Back” (Anti), an album of [...]

Like other reunited bands, the Police could easily have copied the versions of their songs that everyone remembers. But as musicians, they’d rather jam a little.

When Ziggy Marley was announced on the Bonnaroo bill, there was no doubt that he would do songs by his father, Bob.

Who needs lyrics? Saturday afternoon at Bonnaroo was full of pop bands who are in some ways the craftsmanlike, structure-obsessed opposite of happily sprawling jam bands.

Fans rest under a tree.(AP Photo/John Russell)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–Back in the 1960’s, the hippie counterculture briefly looked like a political opposition to a protracted war. At Bonnaroo this year, hippie fashion statements also go with protest songs and anti-Bush pronouncements. Perhaps that’s no suprise at a festival that includes longtime politically inclined rappers like the [...]

Manu Chao Radio performs at one of the main stages. (AP Photo/John Russell)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–Bonnaroo’s late nights are bewildering. After the headline set, the mid-level jam bands vamp into the night. The same fields where I’ve been wandering all day are now unevenly lighted and populated by more or less vertical dancers, seated groups and sacked-out [...]

Unlike audiences in New York, who will give a standing ovation at the drop of a curtain, London audiences remain firmly seated while expressing their appreciation.

Tool didn’t draw a recognizable contingent of its more fearsome fans to
happy-go-lucky Bonnaroo. But it did play a formidable two-hour set.

A group of fans cool off at Bonnaroo.(AP Photo/John Russell)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–A little Bonnaroo music education: I wandered from the tent where Gillian Welch (and her partner David Rawlings) had just finished two bluegrass-tinged songs with John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin joining them on mandolin. (Unfortunately, neither one was Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore.”) I [...]

Kim Kallabis and Matt Stewart dance in the crowd at Bonnaroo. (AP Photo/John Russell)
MANCHESTER, TENN.–Although Nashville is only 60 miles away, Bonnaroo doesn’t book much mainstream country music. The exception this year was Dierks Bentley, a country star on the rockier end of the spectrum who loves trucks and leads a band that wields banjo [...]

MANCHESTER, TENN.–Early Friday afternoon at Bonnaroo brought two well-traveled guitarists playing to grab nonbelievers. James (Blood) Ulmer led a jazz-rock power trio in a set that fell into a pattern: he sang blues songs alternating with instrumentals. The blues were political and personal complaints, including denunciations of the war, a song about Hurricane Katrina and [...]