‘This Is Pop: Festival Rising’ on Netflix Examines The Evolution Of The Modern Music Festival

Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, Christians being fed to the lions at the Colosseum in Rome, religious pilgrimages throughout history, Santacon, humankind has always had a proclivity for mass gatherings where hundreds to millions converge, surrendering themselves to the bliss of being part of something, part of the crowd. The music festival is the modern manifestation of this impulse, whether it be EDM fans in Europe or hipsters at Coachella. The history and importance of the music festival is the subject of “Festival Rising,” part of Banger Films’ new documentary series This Is Pop, which premiered last month on Netflix. 

The festival experience produces “God-like moments,” according to the episode, creating a shared space where people blow off steam from their “increasingly pressurized existence” to come together and kick out the jams. This Is Pop traces the contemporary music festival to the hippie counterculture of 1960s San Francisco. “The heyday of hippies and bikers and radicals and freaks.” Actually, it started in 1959 with the advent of Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival but there’s no doubt the West Coast’s hippie explosion would forever leave its stylistic mark.  

Before promoters started charging entrance fees and selling flavored soda water, San Francisco bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane put on massive free concerts in places like Golden Gate Park and Haight Street. Airplane bassist Jack Casady says the city was a haven for those seeking an alternate mode of existence in the face of the violent upheaval of the times, a time of protests, assassinations and a rapidly evolving drug culture that had begun to take its toll. January 1967’s Human Be-In organized the proceedings, creating a stand alone event which drew up to 30,000, an astonishing figure at the time. 

The Human Be-In planted the seed for the Monterey International Pop Music Festival six months later. If it was more commercial in intent, its diverse lineup expanded the idea of a pop festival to include everything from hard rock to Southern soul and the Indian classical music of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. In its wake, came myriad pop and rock festivals which placed the hippie counterculture front and center, most famously 1969’s Woodstock. “Festival Rising,” however, contends that very few of these events made much money besides those that were able to monetize the experience in the form of live albums and concert films. 

Inspired by like-minded festivals of the time, Michael Eavis launched England’s Glastonbury Festival in 1970, hosting it on his family dairy farm. Over the years Glastonbury evolved to make live music just one facet of the experience, creating a carnival-like atmosphere with a pronounced political consciousness, a nod to its counter-cultural roots. On the other side of the world, Southern California’s US Festival, boasted cutting edge lineups featuring punk, new wave and heavy metal acts and tried to bridge the cold war divide with a satellite link with the Soviet Union. Though it only ran for two years in the early ‘80s, it pointed a way forward, and along with Glastonbury would influence festivals to come.  

Taking the lessons of all those that came before it and updating them for the alternative rock ‘90s, Lollapalooza breathed new life into the music festival format and took it on the road. It featured cool music, political information booths, cultural curios and provided concert goers a yearly experience with which to mark the passage of time. To many, however, the most enduring lesson was that it made money. As the decade progressed, the quest for profits took precedence over community and good will. Woodstock ‘99 was the ultimate perversion, as promoters overcharged for water and food under an unforgiving August sun. Tempers eventually boiled over resulting in riots and looting.

Rising from the ashes of the bonfires that set Woodstock ablaze, festivals such as Bonnaroo and Coachella aspire to create a climate that’s friendly for concert goers and reflects a true love of music. Of course, their survival is also predicated on their ability to make money. “Festival Rising” ends by pondering the enduring appeal of music festivals. Is it the music, the shared experience, the selfies, the drugs? A bit of each it concludes.   

While “Festival Rising” exhibits the same gift for storytelling and production values as other episodes of This Is Pop, it also omits facts or frames them to fit its chosen narrative. Yes, music festivals bring people together to partake in a shared experience that fosters a sense of community. They’re also marketing stunts that have been clinically refined over the past 30 years to maximize profits, their ultimate by-product not world peace but buzz. The community they promise is an illusion, a temporary salve to alleviate the alienation of the modern world, the individual swallowed by the mass, a colored dot inside a crowd shot, like ants seen from above.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch the "Festival Rising" episode of This Is Pop on Netflix