ABSTRACT
Music has long been a significant component of rituals, festivals and other community events. Historians point out that music and dance were integral to religious ceremonies and political meetings in ancient Egypt, while the Pythian Games held in Delphi – a 6th-century precursor to the Olympic Games – included music performance as well as music and poetry competitions (Hudson, Roth, Madden, & Hudson 2015). What we might recognise as a music festival today is evident in the festivities associated with the troubadour guilds of 11th-century southern Europe (Frey 1994). The music festival as a format is particularly long lived; for example, for a little over 300 years, the Three Choirs Festival has rotated between the English cathedral cities of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, making it one of the oldest continuing music festivals in Europe (Boden & Hedley 2017). Many contemporary music festival practices and programmes continue to maintain a focus on specific music genres, which some scholars argue was in response to the lack of live performance opportunities in society following the Second World War (Robertson, Yeoman, Smith, & McMahon-Beattie 2015). Even so, the music festival format remains an important live music strategy in the face of issues such as policy regulations in regard to noise, urban and regional development strategies, and the rapid increase in the development and democratisation of participation in the online world. Indeed, as numerous studies have demonstrated, the number of music festivals has grown exponentially (Getz & Page 2016), and with this the range, goals and formats of music festivals have increased (Gibson 2013). The prevalence and scope of music festivals means that the study of music festivals is more than an examination of musical genre and style. Scholars have sought to better understand the role these festivals play in such things as the formation of identity and community; inclusive and exclusionary practices of social formation; the maintenance of tradition, urban and rural regeneration and development; health and well-being; tourism; and the experiential economy (Ballantyne, Ballantyne, & Packer 2014; Gibson 2013; Laing & Mair 2015).
