The Pop Festival

'I'm going to camp out on the land . try and get my soul free'. So sang Joni Mitchell in 1970 on 'Woodstock'. But Woodstock is only the tip of the iceberg. 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. From pop and rock to folk, jazz and techno, under stars and canvas, dancing in the streets and in the mud, the pleasures and politics of the carnival since the 1950s are discussed in this innovative and richly-illustrated collection. The Pop Festival brings scholarship in cultural studies, media studies, musicology, sociology, and history together in one volume to explore the music festival as a key event in the cultural landscape - and one of major interest to young people as festival-goers themselves and as students.

George McKay is a leading writer on alternative cultures and music. He is Professor of Media Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK; his website is georgemckay.org

Acknowledgements Picture credits Contributors Introduction George McKay Chapter 1. 'The pose . is a stance': popular music and the cultural politics of festival in 1950s Britain George McKay Chapter 2 Out of sight: the mediation of the music festival Mark Goodall Chapter 3 'Let there be rock!' Myth and ideology in the rock festivals of the transatlantic counterculture Nicholas Gebhardt Chapter 4 'As real as real can get': race, representation, and rhetoric at Wattstax, 1972 Gina Arnold Chapter 5 The artist at the music festival: art, performance and hybridity Rebekka Kill Chapter 6 Photo-essay: Free festivals, new travellers, and the free party scene in Britain, 1981-1992 Alan Lodge Chapter 7 Festival bodies: the corporeality of the contemporary music festival scene in Australia Joanne Cummings and Jacinta Herborn Chapter 8 The Love Parade: European techno, the EDM festival, and the tragedy in Duisburg Sean Nye and Ronald Hitzler Chapter 9 Protestival: global days of action and carnivalised politics at the turn of the millennium Graham St John Chapter 10 Alternative playworlds: psytrance festivals, deep play and creative zones of transcendence Alice O'Grady Chapter 11 No Spectators! The art of participation, from Burning Man to boutique festivals in Britain Roxanne Robinson Chapter 12 Musicking in Motor City: reconfiguring urban space at the Detroit Jazz Festival Anne Dvinge Chapter 13 Branding, sponsorship, and the music festival Chris Anderton Chapter 14 Everybody talk about pop music: Un-Convention as alternative to festival, from DIY music to social change Andrew Dubber Index