• Music festivals are typically oriented towards the genre of music and are held every year. They commonly take place outdoors and are considered to be a social event with a selection of different attractions including food and merchandise vending machines, performance art, and social activities. The Pythons Games in Delphi was known as one of the earliest festivals with musical performances and music and theatre play competitions which were carried out in the main theatre. Some examples of music festivals are featured below:

MUSIC FESTIVALS

Glastonbury Festival

BY MEGAN SELLAR

The V Festival

Creamfields

Download Festival logo

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

• Glastonbury Festival is a five-day music festival that takes place every year during the last weekend in June near the small village of Pilton, Somerset, England. The festival features artists from a selection of different music genres including rock, electronic, reggae, dance and many others. In addition to contemporary music, the festival also hosts social events such as dance and comedy which are used to help encourage people from all over the world to come and visit.

• The festival first began in 1914 as a series of concerts, lectures and recitals called the ‘Glastonbury Festivals’ and was later known as ’Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival’ after they became heavily influenced by the ethos of the hippie ethics and the free festival movements in the early 1970s. After the 1970s, the festival took place almost every year and grew in size, with the number of attendees sometimes being swollen by gate-crashers. Elvis hosted the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open-air Led Zeppelin concert at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music; fourteen people invested everything they had to build the stage.

• Over the years leading pop and rock artists have headlined including David Bowie and Kylie Minogue alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas. The festival receives extensive television and newspaper coverage every year with films and albums being recorded at Glastonbury and then being released to the music industry. Glastonbury festival is known as one of the largest greenfield festival in the world, and is now attended by around 175,000 people.

THE V FESTIVAL

• The V Festival is an annual music festival held every year during the penultimate weekend in August. The festival was predominantly known as a rock music festival, however now involves a wide range of musical genres including pop acts which have become more common in recent years. The event features a range of music artists performing on different stages at two parks - Hylands Park, Chelmsfield and Weston Park, South Staffordshire with music artists taking it in turns to perform at both events. The name of the festival is significant as the letter "V" represents the Virgin Group, with the event being sponsored by the mobile, television and broadband service Virgin Media. The event was previously televised by Channel 4, on their sister channel 4 Music however this year it was announced that television broadcast rights would be returned to MTV.

• The first V festival took place on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th August 1996 when the alternative rock band ‘Pulp’ main singer Jarvis Cocker announced he would love to play at two outdoor venues. His promoters all got together and came up select locations including Victoria Park, Warrington and Hylands Park, Chelmsford which he would believe would give fans the opportunity in both North and South London a chance to see the band. He also came up with the idea of adding more bands, building a second stage and letting people camp for the weekend. In 1999 the Northern leg of the festival was moved to Weston Park in Staffordshire, and has remained there since.

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL

• Download Festival is a British Rock festival which involves music from the genres of heavy metal, rock and punk. The festival is held every year at Donington Park in Leicestershire and is considered to be one of the two major and most popular British summer rock and metal events.

• Download Festival was regarded to be a copy of the ‘Monsters of Rock ’festivals which had previously been held at the Donington Park circuit between 1980 and 1996. The first Download Festival was established by Stuart Galbraith and Andy Copping in 2003 in the same location of the ‘Monsters of Rock Festival’. The festival was initially a two-day event but expanded to three days in 2005 to welcome more visitors.

• The festival name ’Download ’was chosen specifically as during the music industry at the time the word ‘downloading’ was considered to be quite bad and rebellious as file sharing of music was prohibited and still today many see rock music as a badly behaved genre of music, signifying the meaning behind the name ‘Download’.

• The festival has hosted some of the biggest names in rock, including Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Motörhead, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, Judas Priest, Linkin Park, and the modern day line-up of Guns N' Roses.

CREAMFIELDS

• Creamfields is a large British dance music festival which features a wide range of DJs and live acts from all over the world. The festival first began as an offshoot from Liverpool's Cream nightclub and is now held every year on the August Bank Holiday weekend in the village of Daresbury, England. The festival is typically targeted towards younger adults and is also held in other countries including Abu Dhabi, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Russia and many more.

• Over the years 2009 leading DJ’s and live acts have performed including most recently Basement Jaxx, Deadmau5, Friendly Fires and Tiesto.

Official Creamfields logo of 2014 Creamfields 2012Creamfields 2014