On April 29, 2018, Suzhou, Cui Jian performed on the main stage of the Midi Music Festival. (Visual China Picture)
On the last day of April 2000, at the foot of Beijing’s Fragrant Mountain, a completely free and impromptu “music festival” was being born. This music festival was organized by Midi School. It was originally intended to be a report performance by students and was held in the school's auditorium.
It’s hot in early summer, and the campus is filled with the smell of grass and hormones. The cold free beer soothes the restless heart, and 24 speakers converge into a huge sound wave. The construction site was outside the auditorium of Midi Music School, where
was held at that time. The lively music attracted migrant workers. They went shirtless, put up ladders and leaned on the wall to listen. "I said come in, buddy, and then they all came in." Zhang Fan, founder of the Midi Music Festival, once recalled in an interview, "Music is like this, free, without hierarchy, without wealth or poverty, it is the most direct and simple thing."
Amidst the cheers and noises, 33 bands performed almost crazily on the stage, and excited faces and dancing limbs flashed under the stage. Many years later, some people recalled that those two days were like a utopia.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the China Outdoor Music Festival kicked off and has gone through a history of more than 20 years. By 2023, according to statistics, there will be as many as 560 music festivals taking place throughout the year, which is equivalent to an average of 1.5 music festivals being held every day across the country.
"The music festival is actually a cultural festival, or a fun concept that everyone is looking forward to." As the organizer of several music festivals, Ma Wu observed that music festivals before 2018 were more diversified and "fun Some". In recent years, as the number of music festivals has exploded, "resulting in oversupply, market disadvantages will gradually emerge."
Rock and Roll Comes Back, Profiting Millions
Tracing back to the history of Chinese music festivals, in July 1999, the first "Heineken Beat 99 Summer Music Festival" was held in Beijing's Ritan Park, which can be regarded as the first Chinese-sponsored event in mainland China. Outdoor music festival.
The emergence of the Midi Music Festival in 2000 marked the beginning of China's outdoor music festivals from silence to excitement in the early 21st century. After the first edition, the Midi Music Festival continued to be held on campus for three consecutive years, and its influence gradually expanded. In 2004, it came to the Beijing International Sculpture Park and held its first off-campus performance. This is also the first time for the Midi Music Festival to sell tickets to the public, with tickets priced at 10 yuan.
At the same time as the Midi Music Festival, there was also the Lijiang Snow Mountain Music Festival, which was born in 2002 and was led by Cui Jian, the "Godfather of Rock and Roll". In the wind and rain at an altitude of 3,000 meters, thousands of music fans came to watch the performance. Pop singers and rock singers performed on the same stage, and an old Naxi artist sang the theme song of the music festival a cappella. His singing blended in with the silent snow-capped mountains and the empty surroundings. At that time, the "Real Singing Movement" advocated by Cui Jian was in full swing. On the music festival stage, he declared that the voice is the first musical instrument of mankind, and accused the then Spring Festival Gala and "The Same Song" program of being representative of lip-synching.
Cui Jian hopes that China will one day hold a music festival with millions of people attending. Similar to many early music festival operators, he also has a "Woodstock complex."
In 1969, it was the era when hippies were in power and "rock and roll was right". Woodstock in the United States held a four-day music festival, and 400,000 music fans experienced the fanatical music life. The movie "Making Woodstock" directed by Ang Lee also recorded this wonder of human history.
Stills from the film "Making Woodstock" directed by Ang Lee. (File photo)
Most of China’s rock youth have experienced the spiritual baptism of the Woodstock video tape with a lag. They yearn for the kind of utopia that symbolizes love and freedom, but they cannot believe that it will really happen.
The Helan Mountain Music Festival in 2004 was another large-scale outdoor rock music festival that music fans will never forget. It has since become famous as China's first profitable music festival. There is a desert at the foot of Helan Mountain, about 37 kilometers away from Yinchuan city. The organizers originally expected that 10,000 people would come to the event, but in the end it attracted 120,000 visitors.A strong performance lineup and strong real estate sponsorship provided guarantee for the success of the music festival. The profit of 1 million yuan created a myth in the Chinese rock industry. However, due to the break in the investor's capital chain, the Helan Mountain Music Festival was only held for one session.
The 18 groups of bands and singers participating in this music festival, except for Su Yang and Second-Hand Rose who formed the army in 2000, are all "veterans" who debuted before 1995. Cui Jian returns, Zhang Chu, who has been dormant for many years, He Yong, who has been absent for a long time, and Luo Qi, who has returned from Germany, reunite at the music festival after many years. This is almost an unprecedented "comeback" performance by China's first generation of rock musicians.
At the beginning of the 21st century, China's economy began to boom, and material life was unprecedentedly rich. The post-70s and post-80s generations who grew up in the wave of reform and opening up began to become the main consumers. Compared with previous generations, they know how to enjoy life and need to enjoy it more. Life. The China Outdoor Music Festival came into being in this environment.
Say goodbye to utopia and welcome market competition
2005 is an important node for China's outdoor music festival to say goodbye to utopia and enter marketization.
Midi Music Festival was invited by Beijing Haidian Park and received the "Beijing Performance Permit Notice" issued by the Haidian District Cultural Committee, becoming the first "festival" named after the government's cultural management department and run by a private organization. Cultural Activities. The organizer has increased the single-day ticket price to 30 yuan, making it more commercial, and the performance hardware and lineup levels have also been greatly improved.
In order to attract audiences, the Beijing Pop Music Festival, founded in 2005, has invited well-known domestic and foreign singers and bands such as Zhang Chenyue, Ian Brown, Placebo, Nine Inch Nails, and Supergrass. The higher the level of performers, the higher the cost, and subsequently the higher ticket prices. While the audience at the Midi Music Festival was still struggling with the price of 30 yuan for a single-day ticket, the Beijing Pop Music Festival offered a high price of 150 yuan for a single-day ticket. Market feedback proves that as long as the performing guests are in place, there is no problem with higher ticket prices.
Public opinion has also undergone some interesting changes. In reports of that year, the word "Woodstock" began to be replaced by "Glastonbury". Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK was founded only one year after Woodstock, but it has been successfully operating for half a century and is one of the largest music festivals in the world. In 2005, "Sanlian Life Weekly" reported on the Midi Music Festival and quoted the founder of the music festival, Mike Eavis: "People just long to live a return to nature here for a few days and listen to music."
In 2007, the 8th Midi Music Festival received a 500,000 yuan cultural and creative industry development support fund from Haidian District and became profitable for the first time.
On September 30, 2008, in Beijing, Zhang Chu attended the Modern Sky Music Festival. (Visual China Picture)
In the same year, the well-known music label Modern Sky launched its first music festival in Haidian Park, Beijing. It had 4 stages and invited more than 120 bands and artists to participate, including many first-line stars. For the first time, domestic outdoor music festivals have become competitive.
, a music festival under the banner of "music + (bigger than music)", in addition to performances, markets and catering that had become the standard modules of music festivals at that time, it also added various pan-cultural contents, such as creative life, fashion , sports, images, etc. The music festival is no longer only suitable for music fans in the strict sense, but also for audiences who like creative life, fashion, sports and images. Shen Lihui, the director of
Modern Sky, also has a very practical view of the music festival. He once said in an interview that the Chinese music festival is not a product of the hippie generation, but a bit like a product of the hedonistic generation. There is no need to call it Woodstock. , people should create something that makes the younger generation feel real, rather than imagining a utopia.
After hosting two Modern Sky Music Festivals, in 2009, Modern Sky hosted a new music festival brand, Strawberry Music Festival, with a more fashionable and popular slogan as soon as it appeared. The Rebo Music Festival, also founded in 2009, is based in Chengdu. It adds pop elements to rock music and has performed well, which means that the music festival has spread beyond first-tier cities to the country.
Also appearing around this period were Hangzhou West Lake Music Festival, Zhangbei Grassland Music Festival, Zhoushan Donghai Music Festival, etc. In the past ten years, China's outdoor music festivals have entered a stage of comprehensive marketization, with the government and enterprises actively participating. As the
music festival becomes increasingly popular in China, it also needs to face some problems that are different from those of Western music festivals. Scotsman Archie Hamilton has been organizing various music festivals in China since 2007. On the day of the first music festival, he was shocked to find a group of retired employees practicing Tai Chi in the park; the police often pulled up isolation ropes at the scene to prevent spectators without tickets from entering the music festival. However, the festival allows ordinary people to enter, and the audience can be unrestrained and let themselves go to a certain extent. These aspects are very similar to music festivals in the United States and elsewhere. After the reshuffle of
and the full marketization of the band's traffic era
, China's outdoor music festivals naturally ushered in a blowout period. In 2009, a total of 44 games were held, which rose to 66 in 2010 and to 121 in 2013.
Local governments have increased their support for music festivals, and many music festivals have turned losses into profits. In 2011, new music festivals such as Black Earth and Legu Love emerged in large numbers, and southern cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Zhuhai began to hold frequent jazz festivals. Beginning in 2012, the Midi and Strawberry Music Festivals entered the national "chain" model and began to hold the "Twin Cities Music Festival" in Beijing and Shanghai.
In those years, as the real estate market took off, real estate developers discovered the publicity effect of music festivals in accumulating popularity. At that time, the stages of music festivals were almost always located near newly completed buildings. From 2013 to 2014, Evergrande Real Estate operated nearly 30 music festivals each year.
In 2015, the development of domestic outdoor music festivals went through a period of adjustment, with both numbers and box office revenue declining. While the music festival market is booming, it has also brought about problems of serious homogeneity and rough production. Policies have gradually tightened. In addition, the stampede in Shanghai has significantly reduced the number of approved music festivals this year. Even the Midi Music Festival in Beijing and Shanghai stations were all canceled due to venue approval reasons.
After 2017, China’s outdoor music festivals have been held more rationally, and the situation is likely to be “shuffled”. From 2017 to 2019, the number dropped from 269 to 257. Some established music festivals maintain their competitiveness with years of hard work and operational experience, while emerging music festivals that lack professional teams cannot escape the fate of being short-lived. The decline in the number of music festivals can be said to be the result of industry self-regulation.
In the early days of China's outdoor music festivals, rock was the main focus. Later, comprehensive outdoor music festivals gradually became mainstream, such as Strawberry Music Festival, Taishan Music Festival, Chunlang Music Festival, and the transformed Midi Music Festival, which all covered rock and jazz. , folk, rap, pop and other music types.
At this time, most music festivals adopted a multi-stage setup. In 2014, the Yangtze River Midi Music Festival has a total of nine stages. The "Tang" stage focuses on metal music, the "Song" stage focuses on rock music, the "Yuan" stage focuses on electronic music, and the "Han" stage introduces Chinese operas such as Peking Opera and Kunqu Opera. The folk stage focuses on folk music... This not only meets the needs of different music fans for different types of music, but also expands the audience of the music festival.
The new forces formed by the gathering of niche cultures have also impacted the original music festival pattern. Outdoor music festivals have begun to subdivide into new categories, such as the intro electronic music festival, which is mainly electronic music, and the valley folk music, which is mainly folk music. festivals, hip-hop-based ayo music festivals, etc. are blooming everywhere. Behind the changes in the format and lineup of the
music festival, music variety shows are a strong driving force. Around 2015, songs such as "Miss Dong", "Nanshannan" and "Chengdu" became popular in talent shows, jointly promoting the popularity of folk songs. The 2017 variety show "China Has Hip Hop" made Chinese rap popular. In 2019, "Summer of the Band" became a phenomenon-level variety show, and the band's traffic era came with it.
New Pants Band performs. (Visual China Picture)
In the first half of 2019, a total of 27 groups of musicians and bands performed more than 5 times at the music festival. New Pants Band and Pain Yang participated in "Summer of the Band" together and won the championship and runner-up respectively in the final competition.On many music festival posters, you can always see their names in bold or written at the top of the list, like a box office elixir. "You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you want to dance," a scene that has been repeated countless times, the new pants appear at the finale, and the familiar melody sounds, it can still set off a heat wave in the scene. The two bands with the most appearances at the 2020 Music Festival are Wu Tiao Ren and Da Lang, who made a lot of talk in "Summer of the Band 2" that year. During the May 1st session of the 2021 music festival, bands such as Pain Yang, Wutiao Ren, and Jiulian Zhenren visited three or four cities in succession.
"One of the better things about Midi is that it has its own aesthetic. Its Warring States stage will always have a bunch of metal bands there, and there will always be a band on the stage that everyone may have never heard of. Music If you want to keep the festival going for a long time, you have to have your own taste." Rabbit, a rock fan who has been listening to the music scene for more than ten years, told Southern Weekend reporters that the most attractive thing about the music festival is the lineup, but many music festivals now do not have their own. taste.
Ma Wu also believes that diversity in the lineup is a scarce quality in current music festivals. “I can only rely on my sensitivity to the market and understanding of music to discover some new, good or interesting people. In 2018 In the past, music festivals focused more on discovering interesting and fun bands, but now everyone may mainly invite popular and popular ones, ignoring these.”
Old music fans, new audiences
After the epidemic, with the passing of the epidemic. Various types of outdoor music festivals continue to emerge, and the proportion of "music" in music festivals has further declined. The balance has tilted towards "festival", and the pan-entertainment characteristics of music festivals have become increasingly prominent. In the 2021 Guyu data survey, the option with the highest ranking of outdoor music festivals' appeal to young people is "feeling the carnival atmosphere of live music", which is much higher than the second place "having a favorite singer/band".
Generally speaking, the stage area of a music festival focuses more on performances, while the viewing area is a festival where everyone gathers together. For the audience, this is a grand festival away from daily life, where they can play, dive, pogo, and drive trains to the music. The combined effect of the two parts makes the music festival have a connotation similar to a carnival.
Three years after the epidemic, outdoor music festivals are still popular among music fans and have become the second venue for artists from all walks of life. In addition to familiar faces from the past, comedians, idol group members, talent show artists, etc. have all joined the music festival and become part of the luxurious lineup. The audience of the
music festival has changed even more completely, with star-chasing fans and fashionistas flocking to the venue. Music fan Wu Mi served as a volunteer for many music festivals before the epidemic. She noticed that the viewing habits of different groups of people were quite different. Once when she was checking tickets at the ticket gate, she was almost knocked down by a star-chasing fan who rushed in. Fans and music fans have conflicts over various details. "We may think that they are 'forcing us to stand' there, so that we can't see the front row, and we can't move or play. Then they may think that we are crazy. Sometimes when driving a train or something, we will It's more violent, so it's easy to get hit and stepped on," Wu Mi described to Southern Weekend reporters. Pippi, a fan of the
girl group xg, went from Yangjiang to Guangzhou to attend the music festival at the end of March 2024 in order to see her idols. She feels, "After the epidemic was relaxed and some band culture emerged, everyone began to go to music festivals, including a trend on social media." This music festival will arrange xg with a number of rappers On the same day, some rap fans criticized girl group fans like her on the Internet. Pippi said helplessly that xg fans must not be allowed to buy tickets.
Faced with the frequently staged platter lineup, music fan Wu Xiaowen analyzed: "It is definitely good for them (the organizers), because there are not so many people who follow the crowd in folk songs and rock. People tend to follow the crowd and tend to be popular, and popular products will sell better. Go faster and sell the same amount every day, and they will be mixed together. "
In the past, music festivals usually did not distinguish between seats and ticket levels, reflecting freedom and equality. However, with the invasion of commercialism, VIP status appeared in music festivals, and the audience Hold these statuses by purchasing higher-priced tickets to gain priority entry, exclusive seating areas, and front-row viewing privileges.In the past, most music festivals only had two types of ticket stalls: VIP tickets and ordinary tickets. Nowadays, the zoning of some music festivals is even more complicated than that of concerts.
"In the concert market, everyone agrees, but in the music festival, everyone agrees that this is a relatively free and relaxed occasion. If the concert mode is moved over, it will make people feel a bit uncomfortable. Still a concept It’s a matter of difference,” Umi said bluntly.
Wumi and her friends also observed the decline of the music festival’s volunteer culture. She started volunteering at the Strawberry Music Festival in 2017, experienced professional advance training, and received peripheral gift bags for volunteers. What she remembers most is the atmosphere of communication between partners who share common interests. Nowadays, many music festivals make volunteers feel that they are more utilitarian, "there is no sense of being together because of a common interest in music", and it is suspected that they are simply treated as cheap labor. For example, some organizers will strictly restrict volunteers from attending performances, fail to provide logistical support such as meals, or boss them around. After working at
, Umi no longer volunteers, but will still go to music festivals as an audience member. "The music festival can be said to be a small utopia and enchantment for us. Watching live will have physical and mental sequelae, but without live and friends in it, life will be more painful and lonely."
interview Afterwards, Umi left a message saying that she hoped that the live music she loved would be more understood and become better, "even if only a little bit."
Southern Weekend reporter Zhu Yuan Southern Weekend intern Dong Jiadi
editor-in-chief Li Muyan
