Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is a music and performing arts festival held on a farm near Pilton , near the town of Glastonbury in Somerset in south-west England . During the festival, music groups from all areas of contemporary popular music perform, from rock music to folk , world music and jazz to hip-hop , drum and bass and others. The program also includes theater , dance , comedy and circus performances . The event usually takes place on the last weekend in June, lasts three days and has developed into one of the world's largest contemporary open-air music festivals since 1970 (number of visitors in 2011: around 177,000.)
history
The origins of the festival lie in the hippie era and are influenced by its ethics. Remnants of it such as the Green Futures / Healing Fields sections on the festival site or its reputation as a place of excessive drug consumption can still be seen today . There is also a megalithic circle on the site , but it was built especially for the festival, so it has no historical origin.
The first festival on the Worthy Farm of dairy farmer Michael Eavis near the village of Pilton was held on September 19, 1970 as the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival . Around 1,500 viewers saw performances by Marc Bolan , Keith Christmas , Stackridge , Al Stewart and Quintessence , and free milk was included in the entry fee of one pound. The following June, in connection with the summer solstice, a second festival called Glastonbury Fayre took place - organized by Andrew Kerr (1933–2014) and Arabella Churchill , Hawkwind , Traffic , Melanie , David Bowie , Joan Baez , Fairport Convention performed free of charge and Quintessence .
After a small spontaneous festival took place in 1978, Bill Harkin and Arabella Churchill organized the next Glastonbury Fayre in 1979 on the occasion of the International Year of the Child - the three-day festival with Peter Gabriel , Steve Hillage and the Alex Harvey Band , however, became financially a loss.
As a result, the concept of the event, which has been called Glastonbury Festival since 1981 , is organized by Michael Eavis and (with a few exceptions) takes place annually.
Michael Eavis is still running the festival through his company Glastonbury Festivals Ltd (since 1981) and he continues to set large parts of the program. In some areas and stages he has given up control, for example The Left Field is organized by some union-related associations and another field is operated by Greenpeace . Since 2002, the organization has been shared with the organizing company Festival Republic (then Mean Fiddler Music Group) - the contract is concluded for five years at a time, and Eavis stated that there is a break of one year after that. Eavis donates all profits to charity, with the cooperation since 2002 according to its share of 60% of the total profits. Due to the large number of volunteers, the costs of the festival remain low, but a number of stands and the technical infrastructure are provided by appropriately aligned companies. Eavis has received widespread recognition for its decades of service, including honorary doctorates from the University of Bath and the University of Bristol , as well as a Commander-in-Chief (CBE) of the Royal British Order .
In 2012 and 2018, the festival did not take place to give the farmland a recovery period. In 2020 the festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic .
The musical spectrum
The Glastonbury Festival is one of the largest and most famous rock festivals in Europe. Sometimes it is also referred to as "English Woodstock ". In contrast to many other festivals, which either focus on a certain musical genre or only present well-known acts, the musical spectrum of the Glastonbury Festival is very diverse. In addition to well-known stars such as Led Zeppelin , Neil Diamond , The Kinks , Paul McCartney , Johnny Cash , T. Rex , Shakira , Robbie Williams and Suzanne Vega or younger rock acts such as Travis , Lady GaGa , Coldplay , Muse , Oasis and New Order , the festival also presented a number of alternative acts and newcomers in the course of the 1990s and 2000s such as Jamiroquai , the German world music troupe Dissidents , the alternative country and folk musicians Michelle Shocked and Angie Palmer , PJ Harvey or Nightmares on Wax . In 2003, for example, the Manic Street Preachers , Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), the Sugababes , the Asian Dub Foundation , Pendulum , Radiohead , The Flaming Lips , Los Lobos , Primal Scream , The Skatalites and dozens of other bands played in almost 10 different tents .
The BBC Introducing Stage has existed since 2007, where young or unsigned bands are presented to a wider public, such as Gabby Young & The Other Animals , The Ting Tings , The Brute Chorus , Two Door Cinema Club and Jake Bugg , who played at the following festival already appeared on the main stage.
Accompanying circumstances
Due to its popularity, the circumstances of the festival always attract attention. During the 1990s, the event became notorious for massive overcrowding and crime. The practice of gaining entry without a ticket had become established and caused massive problems. In 2002 the reopening took place with a considerably reinforced outer fence, and in 2003 the public finally accepted that it was hardly possible to come to the site for free. The tickets were sold out within 20 hours of the advance booking opening. In 2004 it was sold out again within 24 hours, amid heavy complaints from potential visitors who were unable to connect to the Internet or reach any of the switchboards during that time. The internet connection had two million hits in the first five minutes after it went online; During these 24 hours there were an average of 2,500 calls per minute on the telephone lines. Numbers that the organization was obviously unable to cope with. 150,000 visitors were expected in 2005. Due to heavy rainfall, however, at the beginning of the festival, a large part of the tents that had been set up were knee-deep under water and the first performances had to be postponed. The John Peel Stage was inaugurated in 2005 . The famous DJ ( BBC Radio 1 ) who died last year was a regular presenter at the festival. The festival came under fire in 2008 when Michael Eavis announced in the British tabloid The Sun that David Gilmour had made the offer to play at the festival. But Eavis declined on the grounds that Gilmour was too old for the young audience.
literature
- Candace Bahouth, Venetia Dearden: Glastonbury: Another Stage. Kehrer, Heidelberg, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86828-046-3 .
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Friends of mud and music (photo gallery from a photo book by British photographer Venetia Dearden at zeit.de )
- podcast.de: Glastonbury - Festival Legend 40 (reportage with interview with festival founder Eavis in the broadcast Corso - culture after three of Germany radio of 26 June 2010)
Individual evidence
- ^ Glastonbury Festival: Glastonbury Festivals - History - 2011
- ^ Glastonbury Festivals - History - 1970 (September 19)
- ↑ Katrin Pribyl: What is Glastonbury without its festival? Retrieved August 2, 2020 .
- ↑ Glastonbury Festival in Great Britain canceled. In: ORF.at . March 18, 2020, accessed March 18, 2020 .
- ↑ Thomas Zeidler: Gilmour received rejection for Glastonbury! (No longer available online.) Www.pulse-and-spirit.com, June 3, 2008, formerly in the original ; Retrieved March 24, 2009 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
