◎ Li Shuang
In a place like the UK, where the year-round clouds and humidity are uncertain, participating in outdoor music festivals where you can enjoy the beautiful countryside has always been one of the most popular ways for people to stay away from the rush and ordinary life and enjoy the summer days.
Emma still shares with friends the Adult Day gifts her sister received from her parents when she graduated from high school , 4 entry tickets for the Glastonbury Music Festival. She said without exaggeration: "At that time, my sister's screams could kill the neighbor's cat!" ”
The 5-day Glastonbury Festival is the UK's largest outdoor music festival, and although there are as many as 200,000 tickets a year, at £248 each, it is still hard to find. Some upper-middle-class parents will give this ticket as a rite of passage because the 5-day event is not only about the most popular music, the hottest singers, mostly sunny field scenery, but also the novel experience of living outdoors, and uninhibited time.
But the pandemic that began in 2020 has led to the cancellation of many outdoor music festivals, and Glastonbury is no exception. Therefore, the gift emma who turned 16 this summer was a ticket to the Redding Leeds Music Festival in south London for 3 days, and she went to an outdoor addiction with 7 other classmates: beer and jazz flying together, people in the sun and rain, sweat, garbage, noise and jeans, glow sticks, sunscreen disorderly mixed, and the e-cigarettes in the air fumigated rebellion and growth.
The British Outdoor Music Festival is an imported product from the United States, and starting with the first Cheltenham Music Festival in 1945, the British quickly embraced this new form of outdoor pop. Two years later, in 1947, the Edinburgh Festival was launched and later developed into a comprehensive international cultural project integrating several art forms such as music, comedy, opera and drama. Born in 1960, the Glastonbury Festival focused on blues, folk and pop, while the Redding Leeds Festival, founded a year later, focused on jazz as well as rock and blues. Now, there are 800 large and small music festivals in the UK throughout the year, in addition to the most famous four major music festivals, there are the Isle of Wight Music Festival and hyde Park Summer Concert, and the famous BBC Proms are not strictly outdoor music festivals because they only perform at albert royal concert hall, and because they focus on classical music, they are also very different from other outdoor music festivals.
Large-scale outdoor music festivals are mainly aimed at young people, while small and medium-sized music festivals will also expand the audience to families, and the number of participants per event ranges from hundreds to 200,000 people. The performers are extremely diverse, from music star Paul McCartney to music stalwart Adele to unknown singers, all of whom can have a place at various festivals.
Although both Reading and isle of Wight predate New York's Woodstock, the 500,000-participant Woodstock represents a boom in hippie culture in the 20th century, when thousands of young people rejected social norms and the labels of the dominant cultural elite and embraced ideas of free love, feminism, environmentalism, self-expression, and equal rights. Because of this, the concept conveyed by a number of outdoor music festivals has been accepted by the British middle and upper class and passed on to the next generation, and Emma's parents are willing to spend thousands of pounds to buy tickets and regard it as a precious gift to the Emma sisters.
Of course, some families attend the festival as a music festival. After all, in a place like the UK, where it's cloudy all year round, participating in outdoor music festivals where you can enjoy the idyllic scenery has always been one of the most popular ways for people to stay away from the rush and ordinary life and enjoy the summer days.
However, after years of growth, outdoor music festivals have now gone from a bastion of counterculture to a milestone of commercial victory. A 2016 survey by The University of East Angela showed that the festival contributed £1.7 billion to the local economy in 2014, providing 13,000 full-time jobs with nearly 2.1 million participants; the Glastonbury Festival earned £44 million in 2018. Emma's sister spent nearly £400 on sleeping bags, travel supplies, tickets, clothing, 5 days of wine burgers and hot dogs in addition to tickets.
Fortunately, it is comforting to note that participation in music festivals also plays a charitable role, with outdoor music festivals supporting local philanthropy by offering free auction tickets and working with various charities to raise funds in an attempt to strike a balance between the commercial and public interests. The Northampton Festival uses 100% renewable energy and has achieved "no meat, no fish" since 2016 to further reduce its carbon footprint, and yoga, health and family-friendly zones are also being integrated into the festival.
In fact, amateur performing arts festivals were documented across the UK as early as 1872, and the International Federation of Music, Dance and Speech Festivals (biff) has been supporting small community music festivals. For example, william Griffiths formed a band in 1869 with his family from South Wales, which eventually developed into a music festival, Eisteddfod. In 1882, John Curwen founded the Stratford and East London Music Festivals, another festival that is still thriving today. These regional music festivals have created millions of performance opportunities for teenagers and adults, and have maintained the diversity of music. Gustav Holst, the former music director of emma school and author of Planet, has participated in the launch of similar small local outdoor music festivals.
The 20-year plan from the Arts Council uk suggests that by 2030 the UK will strive to be a country that values individual creativity and provides opportunities for the arts industry to flourish, with every Briton having access to a high-quality cultural experience. Various outdoor music festivals in the UK, which have a long history, have also been working hard for a diversified artistic ecology.