Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted more than 400,000 attendees. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals in history.
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores. A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), and the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1965–1973).
A rock festival is an open-air rock concert featuring many different performers, typically spread over two or three days and having a campsite and other amenities and forms of entertainment provided at the venue. Some festivals are singular events, while others recur annually in the same location. Occasionally, a festival will focus on a particular genre, but many attempt to bring together a diverse lineup to showcase a broad array of popular music trends.
The Isle of Wight Festival is a British music festival which takes place annually in Newport on the Isle of Wight, England. It was originally a counterculture event held from 1968 to 1970.
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1974 to 1984 held at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating with the summer solstice on or near 21 June. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974, with Wally Hope providing the impetus for its founding, and was itself violently suppressed in 1985 in the Battle of the Beanfield, with no free festival held at Stonehenge since although people have been allowed to gather at the stones again for the solstice since 1999.
Justice? was a 1990s direct action group, based in Brighton, England. It campaigned against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and set up SchNEWS.
New Age Travellers are people located primarily in the United Kingdom generally espousing New Age beliefs with hippie / Bohemian culture of the 1960s. New Age Travellers were often referred to as crusties or gutter punks and used to travel between free music festivals and fairs prior to crackdown in the 1990s. New Traveller also refers to those who are not traditionally of an ethnic nomadic group but who have chosen to pursue a nomadic lifestyle.
The Castlemorton Common Festival was a week-long free festival and rave held in the Malvern Hills near Malvern, Worcestershire, England between 22 and 29 May 1992. The media interest and controversy surrounding the festival, and concerns as to the way it was policed, inspired the legislation that would eventually become the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
Albion Fairs was the general name for the second wave of East Anglian Fairs, running from 1978 until 1982. There were further fairs in the same tradition most years until the end of the 1980s.
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is an amphitheatre, performing arts center and museum located at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, New York. Located approximately 90 miles (140 km) from New York City, the 800-acre (3.2 km2) site includes a 15,000-seat outdoor concert venue, a 1,000-seat outdoor terrace stage, an intimate 440-seat indoor hall, and the Museum at Bethel Woods. Concerts run June through September and feature many types of music genres.
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
A Christian music festival is a music festival held by the Christian community, in support of performers of Christian music. The festivals are characterized by more than just music; many feature motivational speakers and evangelists, and include seminars on Christian spiritual and missions topics, service, and evangelism. They are often viewed as evangelical tools, and small festivals can draw 10 times the crowd of traditional revival meetings. While the central theme of a Christian festival is Jesus Christ, the core appeal of a Christian music festival remains the artists and their music. Critics point out that the dichotomy of business and religious interests can be problematic for Christian festivals. In similar ways as the Christian music industry in general, festivals can be drawn away from their central theme and gravitate toward commercialization and mainstream acts in an attempt to draw crowds.
Bill 'Ubi' Dwyer or William Ubique Dwyer was an anarchist activist in New Zealand, Australia, England and his native Ireland and is best known as the originator and principal organiser of the Windsor Free Festival.
Woodstock Sound-Outs or soundouts were mini-festivals held outside Woodstock, NY from 1967 to 1970. They were the brainchild of John "Jocko" Moffitt, a roofer and drummer. He had heard about a number of folk festivals in his native California, and he wanted to stage a rock festival in a country setting. Planning for the event began in 1966 and by the early spring of 1967 performers like Richie Havens were being tentatively booked.
Sidney William Rawle was a British campaigner for peace and land rights, free festival organiser, and a former leader of the London squatters movement. Rawle was known to British tabloid journalists as 'The King of the Hippies', not a title he ever claimed for himself, but one that he did eventually co-opt for his unpublished autobiography.
Tom Rounds was an American radio broadcasting executive, founder and chief executive officer of Radio Express in Burbank, California.
