Covered: Dance music, Spain
usic festivals. Why on earth would you choose to shell out £200 for the privilege of standing in a cesspit of cow mess, whilst some middle-class vegan strums away on a guitar and whinges endlessly about everything being yellow? We can think of better things to spend your hard-earned cash on, like a smart fisherman’s cagoule or that elaborate Gaggia coffee machine you’ve had your eye on. But what if there was a festival that meant you didn’t have to live like Swampy for three days in apocalyptic shantytown of 20-quid tents? A festival where you don’t have to feast on overpriced ‘gourmet burgers’ and you can avoid conversing in small talk with a meow-meow dealer called Spider? Welcome to Sónar. Sónar has managed to set itself apart from the other festivals that seep through our summers. This ‘International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media’ has established itself as one of the key trendsetters in electronic music whilst dedicating its growth to promoting the talents and technological advances that define the cultures of our modern, urbanised world. In short, Sónar refuses to sway to the same old rhythms and stale old trends of the past. And that’s a very good thing. Sónar was first conceptualised in 1994 by three music-loving Catalans: Sergio Caballero, Enric Palau and Ricard Robles. At the time, Caballero and Palau were both keen music producers and Robles was an established journalist – professions that you could probably attribute the festival’s initial success to. However, despite their backgrounds and the fact that their hometown Barcelona was still in the afterglow of hosting the ’92 Olympics, Robles still attests that, “Sónar started as an uncertain adventure, lacking in cultural references”, with an
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‘sónar basks in the advances of modern culture’
aim to “focus on the sensibilities and interests that surround the relationship between both creativity and technology”. Put simply, the trio wanted to create a meeting point for the cream of electronic practitioners and their grateful audiences. Sónar was, and still is, all about basking in the advances of modern culture. In the third week of June 1994, Sónar was born, attracting an audience of 6,000 people to Barcelona. Festival-goers were enticed by an entirely forward-thinking sound brought to them from the likes of Sven Väth, Laurent Garnier and Transglobal Underground. In the same year, Micheal Eavis enticed a mob of around 80,000 to the muddied
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