Discover Germany | Feature | Festival Summer
Main image: Hurricane Festival. Š hurricane.de, Christoph Eisenmenger Right: Hurricane Festival. Š hurricane.de, Pablo Heimplatz
A touch of Woodstock Whitsun is the unofficial kick-off for a special season in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: the festival season. Thousands of people, mostly young, dig into the camping lifestyle and leave running water and an unlimited power supply behind to enjoy their favourite music and get a bit of that Woodstock feeling. TEXT: MONIQUE AMEND
Open-air festivals have their origin in the United States and have attracted more and more fans since their first steps in the early 1960s. Among the pioneers are the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and the Monterey Pop Festival in California, which have set the path for artists like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who were barely known at this time. The famous Woodstock Festival made these music gatherings a worldwide phenomenon and
helped to motivate European promoters to establish festivals in Europe as well. Starting from Great Britain, the success of open-air festivals quickly spread over the rest of the continent. The beginnings in Germany were not promising at all as the organisers found it hard to keep the balance between a good range of music artists and financial profitability. Yet after some start-up
difficulties, numerous open-air festivals could establish themselves in the 1970s and the industry has continued to grow. One festival guide online lists over 400 festivals in Germany for 2016 and this collection does not even guarantee completeness. Over the years, some have developed to become the most demanded nationwide and enjoy international popularity. The following are the highlights no real festival junkie would like to miss. Rock am Ring & Rock im Park These twin festivals are the most famous and popular ones in Germany and offer a great variety of music genres from rock, metal and indie to pop artists and bands. They both take place on the same weekend Issue 40 | July 2016 | 87