Alternative festivals

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Alternative festivals was an alternative music festival as part of the Swedish music movement Progg , which was organized in Stockholm from March 17-22 , 1975 as a counter-movement to the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest , which was taking place in the city at the same time . The band ABBA had won the European music competition last year with the song Waterloo . This competition was perceived by the organizers as too commercial, which is why alternative festivals had the motto “Fight against the commercialization of culture” (kamp mot cultures commersialisering) . The festival took place in a circus tent in Stockholm's Storängsbotten district. Around 850 musicians from 23 countries and different genres performed and around 12,000 people attended the festival.

Emergence

The so-called music movement (Musikrörelsen) or Progg was a scene of alternative musicians in Sweden. When the public television broadcaster Sveriges Radio (predecessor of SVT ) planned to spend a large part of its music budget on organizing the Eurovision Song Contest in 1975 , alternative musicians protested and suggested that the broadcaster should rather promote culture and especially music at the local level Spending money almost exclusively on the international, commercial music industry. The demand and the alternative festivals that emerged from this protest received broad support, especially from state institutions such as the concert promoter Rikskonserter , Kulturrådet , the cultural department of the Stockholm city administration, the producers 'department of Sveriges Radio and most of the country's musicians' associations.

There were ideological divisions around the festival within Sweden's alternative music scene. The Gothenburg cultural center Sprängkullen , which was considered to be an important meeting point for the alternative music scene in Sweden, also boycotted the alternative festival because it perceived it as too commercial and therefore reduced the socialist criticism of the song contest to absurdity. Sprängkullen would have wanted to promote socialist movements from the Third World as part of the festival . That same week, Sprängkullen organized an alternative program on its premises in Gothenburg.

Aftermath

The festival was considered very successful in its mobilization against the Eurovision Song Contest and was largely responsible for SVT's decision not to send a Swedish entry to the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest .

Festival performances were released on a double record. The documentary Vi har vår egen sång - musikfilmen (1976, Eng . "We have our own singing - the music film") was shot about the festival and shown in numerous cinemas. The film deals with the genesis of the festival and shows some appearances.

The festival inspired a similar alternative festival which was organized in Norway in 1976 against the Eurovision Song Contest, but which found little support outside of the alternative music scene.

Participating artists (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Förföljelsen av Abba kräver en sanningskommission ( Memento of August 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Gefle Dagblad , April 13, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f David Thyrén: The Alternative Eurovision Song Contest 1975 in Sweden . In: Tania Ørum; Jesper Olsson: A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1950-1975 . Brill, 2016, ISBN 978-90-04-31049-0 , pp. 831-840 .
  3. ↑ a b Beate Kutschke, Barley Norton: Music and Protest in 1968 . Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 146 .