A list of my Favorite Music Festivals Around the World
There’s nothing I love more than music festivals and I’m always on the search for concerts and festivals everywhere I travel. In this post I want to share with you a list of my top 3 festivals; What I love is the fact that each one of them has a totally different atmosphere, different music, different types of people and vastly different weather!
Didgeridoo Festival
Where: Shitim, South Israel
When: Every Year in September-October
Tribal music, tribal dancing, art and music workshops, all night dance parties and the quiet of the desert are what you can expect if you attend the Didgeridoo Festival. It is an opportunity to experience music without any preamble, in a barren, desert landscape, just let the music wash over you and leave an impression.
This year was my second time in a row in the fesival and it was fantastic! Here a passion for music unites the artists and audience from different cultures, backgrounds and generations. Organic trance music has developed where traditional instruments like the Aboriginal didgeridoo plays a central role.
The musicians work intuitively to create instinctive music that a wide range of people can identify with. The tribal trance music sweeps people into a dancing frenzy. The festival offers two stages; an opportunity to try out various tribal and alternative instruments under the instruction of experienced artists from Israel and abroad; dance classes and musical expression through the body, sound and color; treatment areas where physical and spiritual treatments use music and alternative healing; a special section for children with musical activities; trance dance parties that last until dawn and arts and crafts stalls.
There are a number of accommodation options, from camping and dorm accommodation to private wooden huts. There are also many vegetrian food stalls and Chai shop. Life is put on hold while you reconnect with your soul and fellow human beings.
Fusion Festival
Where: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
When: Every Year in June
This amazing festival is held in northern Germany 160km from Berlin on former WWII airfields. This was officiay my first festival I ever attended (4 years ago), along with my friends while I was traveling around Europe. The weather was pretty nice during the days but freezing cold and sometimes raining during the nights. but it was also a lot of fun dancing in the rain to the sounds of underground electro music. It made me realise how talented these more modern music artists are and how so many are not financially ready to afford their equipment. It’s so fortunate that we have things like dj finance available to us so we can pursue our dreams and keep making incredible music.
Getting a ticket to this popular festival requires you to enter a lottery. The festival lineup is kept top-secret and a wide variety of musical genres are represented but especially from the underground electro music scene. People come here to completely disconnect from the outside world, to relax and to briefly immerse themselves in a “parallel society” and through the music, communication, theatre, cinema and interaction explore alternative ways of living and relating to others.
For a few days hippies, psytrancers, nihilists, punks, electro-rock fans and anyone in between lives a collective, creative life. Approximately 60,000 people attend the festival each year. Part of the philosophy behind keeping the line-up a secret and including a wide range of musical genres is to encourage people with different interests and points of view to interact.
Because of the altruistic goals of the festival ticket prices are kept extremely low (70€ for the 4 day festival in 2011). People can also volunteer to clean the festival area during their stay, in exchange for a free entry to the festival. At the site participants can camp and enjoy vegetarian food at reasonable prices while they dance the night away in abandoned airplane hangars and glade forests.
T in the Park
Where: Kinross, Scotland
When: Every Year in July
This 20 year old festival got its name from the main sponsor – Tennents brewing Company, it lasts over a weekend and you can kick the festivities off by arriving on Thursday. 70,000 campers attend the festival each year making up a large portion of the total 85,000 festival-goers.
Unlike the two festivals mentioned above this one is more mainstream with international stars like Kings of Leon, Katy Perry, Franz Ferdinand and Calvin Harries performing. Together with these big-name-stars there are local performers as well. Sunny weather, great food and drinks and of course lots of great music! I attended this festival also 4 years ago on my trip to Europe and I was lucky to see 3 of my favorite bands all in one place; The Killers, Manic Street Preachers and Blur.
A huge dance tent is set up and the sponsor’s brew flows freely. At the Main Stage I saw many great performers like: The Killers, Calvin Harries, Squeeze, Blur and The script; Stage 2 where Lilly Allen, Janes addiction and Kean have performed; the Slam Tent where top DJs play together with artists like Jeff Mills, Laurent Garnier and Dave Clarke and King Tut’s Tent where you could see bands like Pet shop Boys, Glasvegas and The Maccabees.
