Introduction: Festivals and Musical Life

Abstract

The articles in this special issue of JSAM originated as contributions to a seminar session at the 2017 SAM conference in Montréal. After meeting a growing number of music scholars who were researching festivals from a variety of disciplinary and methodological orientations over the prior five years, I wanted to provide a forum for festival research at SAM that went beyond a standard conference paper. As a contemporary popular music scholar and ethnomusicologist, much of the research I was encountering examined modern pop festivals, particularly those situated in Western neoliberal capitalist contexts: the rise of massive (and massively profitable) electronic dance music (or EDM) events, the importance of festivals in the live music economy, or the "festivalization of culture" discourse, for example. 1 Festivals are big business in EDM, rock, and pop music, as music industry scholars and pop culture observers have been telling us since at least the early 2000s. 2 Mythic events loom large in popular music's history: Bob Dylan unplugging at Newport in 1965; the US debuts of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Ravi Shankar, and the Who at Monterey Pop in 1967; the romantic utopia of Woodstock in 1969, later undermined by the violence at Woodstock 1999 and the cancellation of Woodstock 50 in 2019; and the tragic violence at the Altamont Speedway at the end of 1969. The popularity of annual destination events in Europe in the 1980s (such as Glastonbury, Isle of Wight, Reading and Leeds, Rock im Park, and Roskilde) and touring festivals in the United States in the 1990s (such as Lilith Fair, Lollapalooza's first iteration, Ozzfest, and Warped Tour) set precedents for the emergence of massive events like Bonnaroo, Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, Lollapalooza's current iteration, Ultra, and others. Although sales of recorded music declined in the early 2000s, and revenue from digital downloads and streaming have never fully compensated for that drop, the success of festivals indicates that fans and listeners are still passionate consumers of music. Major festivals-many of which are as much fashion and social events as they are music events-have become important sources of income for performing artists and sites of music industry gatekeeping. This narrative represents the popular perception of music festivals. But music festival studies have much more to teach us beyond the health of entertainment industries under neoliberal capitalism. Festivals existed before Newport and Woodstock; they exist for genres other than EDM, rock, and pop; they support small scenes as well as host the largest audiences; and not all festivals are focused on profit. First at the seminar in Montréal and now in this special issue of JSAM, my overarching goal