Carnivalising Pop: Music Festival Cultures

a one-day international symposium at the University of Salford

Friday June 13, 2014

Guest speakers:

·      Dr Gina Arnold, Stanford University, USA, author of Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, Kiss This: Punk in the Present Tense

·      Alan Lodge, independent photographer and festival activist, discusses some of his classic images from 1970s free festivals and 1980s/1990s free party scene.

Other contributors include:

·      Dr Nick Gebhardt, Birmingham City University

·      Dr Roxanne Yeganegy, Leeds Metropolitan University

·      Prof George McKay, University of Salford

·      Dr Anne Dvinge, University of Copenhagen

·      Dr Mark Goodall, Bradford University

·      Prof Andrew Dubber, Birmingham City University

.    Dr Emma Webster, Oxford Brookes

.    Dr Ben Halligan, Salford

.    Prof Robert Kronenburg, Liverpool University.

… Newport. Beaulieu. Monterey. Notting Hill. Woodstock. Glastonbury. Nimbim. Roskilde. Reading. Stonehenge. Castlemorton. Love Parade. Burning Man… Popular music festivals are one of the strikingly successful and enduring features of seasonal popular cultural consumption for young people and older generations of enthusiasts. Notwithstanding the annual declaration of the ‘death of festival’, a dramatic rise in the number of music festivals in the UK and around the world has been evident as festivals become a pivotal economic driver in the popular music industry. In 2010, there were over 700 music festivals in Britain alone, and it is estimated that three million people attend music festivals a year. Today’s festivals range from the massive to community and ‘boutique’ events.

The festival has become a key feature of the contemporary music industry’s commercial model, and one of major interest to young people as festival-goers themselves and as students. But the pop festival also has a radical past in the counterculture, a utopian strand in alternative living, some antagonistic anti-authoritarian history, an increasingly mediated other presence, as well as a strong current ethical identity. In the community/communitas of festival, interpretations vary from Temporary Autonomous Zone to festival as pollutant of the rural, from celebration to destruction of the genius loci.

To mark the start of the summer festival season, we have organised this event. The purpose of the symposium is to discuss and explore the significance of music festival cultures. In part the event presents work in progress from the forthcoming collection The Pop Festival: History, Music, Media, Culture (McKay ed., Bloomsbury, 2015). But we may also have some space for other current researchers in the field to share their work too—please do get in touch, soon. The day will be of interest across disciplines, from Popular Music, Media and Cultural Studies, Performance, Film, History, Sociology, American Studies, Business, Tourism and Leisure, Organisation Studies. And it will be of interest to festival organisers and festival-goers, too, as well as music media.

Registration and further information

This is a free event, as part of the AHRC Connected Communities Programme. It is organised by Prof George McKay, Connected Communities Leadership Fellow ([log in to unmask]). 

However advance registration is essential—contact Dr Deborah Woodman, conference administrator, [log in to unmask], +44 (0)161 295 5876, for registration and all enquiries. 

Further information is at http://georgemckay.org/festivals/symposium-2014/.