Dillo Day
American music festival
Dillo Day is an annual all-day music festival at Northwestern University that takes place at the end of spring quarter on the Lakefill. Started in the 1972/73 school year, it is organized by Mayfest Productions, a Northwestern student group, and is the largest student-run music festival in the country. Northwestern lists Dillo Day as one of its most notable traditions.
History
The festival has its roots in May Day, or Mayfete. Mayfete was a time when students would celebrate the "renunciation of the May Queen of the temporal world for a spiritual one," according to a 1951 history of the event. Although little is known about the early days, May Day was originally a celebration of the women of Northwestern. The crowning of the May Queen was the central event, and the pomp included a Maypole dance and cotillion. May Day expanded to May Week in 1946 to accommodate a women's sing, men's sing, and an honors ceremony.
Armadillo Productions was created in 1972 by two students from Austin, Texas, to honor the official animal of their home state and a concert venue there. They held a “I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore” festival and fair that had costumes, games, a treasure hunt, and special events.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dillo Day” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.