Introduction
A festival is generally understood as an openly available (public) event of a celebratory or generally lively and cheerful character, lasting for a number of days and consisting of a collection of different events (Falassi Reference Falassi1987) with a theme that is culturally significant for the local community (Getz Reference Getz1991). Rock music festivals play a central role in popular music mythology, keeping traditions alive, ‘maintaining and expanding their audience base, legitimating particular forms of that tradition, and giving its performers and fans a sense of shared, communal identity’ (Shuker Reference Shuker1998, p. 122). ‘Drawn together from geographically dispersed locations and away from the expectations of everyday life, fans and performers can immense themselves in a particular culture and experiment with different identities’ (Dowd et al. Reference Dowd, Liddle, Nelson, Bennett and Peterson2004, p. 149). Festivals of all kinds, not least within popular music, have been showing phenomenal growth in most parts of the world for a considerable time. In Norway it has been suggested that cultural life, including the popular music scene, has been through a process of ‘festivalisation’ (Aagedal Reference Aagedal, Aagedal, Egeland and Villa2009; Bugge Reference Bugge2004): festivals are increasingly embracing a wider range of cultural events, visitors and local communities. That festivals have thus been of great significance for many people and local communities, as well as for a plethora of forms of cultural expression, is beyond doubt. In the popular music research context, the growth of festivals represents not only an interesting evolution of artistic and communal performance, but also an opportunity for detailed ethnographies of how fandom and music consumption are situated and socially constructed, in what might be considered an (ever-evolving) ‘cultural public sphere’ (Giorgi et al. Reference Giorgi, Sassatelli and Delanty2011). In this paper, an ethnomethodologically inspired (cf. Garfinkel Reference Garfinkel1967) exploration of social mechanisms identified among the rock music festival audience forms an analysis of how the festival's social rhythm is situated and negotiated, but nevertheless is recognisable across different festivals. In addition, I regard the rock music festival as case of a social micro cosmos, limited in time and space, in which social processes may be scrutinised in detail for a more generic understanding of community. Taking an interactionist stand, the festival, as well as social life in general, ‘must be understood in terms of actual interactional processes and practices rather than hypothetical structures’ (Martin Reference Martin1995, p. 168).
Why study festivals
Festival research is by no means an established or unified field of research, but an area about which academic interest has been developing in recent years. In general, studies have been based on theoretical or empirical interests in the social sciences and humanities or on a more applied basis from various commissioning bodies that have invited investigations with the significance of a growing ‘entertainment economy’ (Sundbo and Darmer Reference Sundbo and Darmer2008). The question of whether this economy is needed to make rural towns economically viable and culturally alive has been a recurrent and important theme. It has also been a critical reason for the steadily expanding local authority budgets spent on festival support over recent years. Financial benefits from festivals have been limited, in part because so much of the labour involved in festivals is based on voluntary unpaid labour. On the other hand, exactly this sort of local volunteer work and a broad, popular mobilisation has created faith in the possibility of achieving a new and inspiring level of commitment in small (and often rural) communities. Events may generate constructive local enthusiasm, which can arise from disparate discoveries ranging from the latent potential in a disused petrol station to ceremonial aspects of eating a sheep's head (Norwegian: ‘smalahove’). In a popular music context, a core question deals with ‘how festivals create their sometimes considerable symbolic and economic significance’ (Shuker Reference Shuker1998, p. 123).
My study is a response to Tia DeNora's proposition for socio-musical research, to study ‘how musical materials (and the interpretations and evaluations of these materials) are created, revised, and undercut with reference to the social relations and social contexts of this activity’ (DeNora Reference DeNora2003, p. 39). Consequently, I am concerned here with the very details of rock music festival participation, with special emphasis on how the daily rhythm of the festival is developed collectively, and how this social rhythm may represent a core mechanism of the sociality of the festival. I draw on, and develop Peter Martin's proposition of an interpretive sociology of music, in which a diachronic analysis suggests that ‘cultural and institutional patterns are seen as perpetually developing in response to new contingencies’ (Martin Reference Martin1995, p. 164). The main contribution of the article is the development of the idea that the social rhythm of the festival days (through daily phases) is useful to understand how various festivals become similar to each other and how this similarity affords a general (transferable) value of rock music festival skills. The study is also a more general contribution to an ethnographically oriented sociology of music, by which the links between social life and music is not presumed, but studied in its socially located specificity (cf. DeNora Reference DeNora2003, p. 40).
Festival research
During the past 10–15 years there have been a large number of publications about festivals, often relating to the entertainment economy and tourism. In 2010 a dedicated journal, the International Journal of Event and Festival Management, was established. We also find an extensive double issue of the journal Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism (No. 2–3, 2009) dedicated to ‘events-related research’, of which a number of the contributions relate to studies of festivals. Festival research is multi-faceted, but with some thematic centres of focus. Research has been concerned with the significance of festivals for local community identity, reputation and recognition (Gibson and Davidson Reference Gibson and Davidson2004; Jaeger and Mykletun Reference Jaeger and Mykletun2009; Mykletun Reference Mykletun2009; Pasanen et al. Reference Pasanen, Taskinen and Mikkonen2009; Oakes and Warnaby Reference Oakes and Warnaby2011). This includes studies of aspects connected to innovation and network collaboration, local skills, entrepreneurship and skills-related sustainability (Oakes Reference Oakes2003; Einarsen and Mykletun Reference Einarsen and Mykletun2009; Hjalager Reference Hjalager2009; Karlsen and Nordstrom Reference Karlsen and Nordstrom2009; Larson Reference Larson2009; Abfalter et al. Reference Abfalter, Stadler and Muller2012). Festivals have in turn been found to contribute to the revitalisation and mobilisation of ethnic identity and local tradition (Anttonen et al. Reference Anttonen, Siikala, Mathisen and Magnusson2000; Mathisen Reference Mathisen2009; Pedersen and Viken Reference Pedersen, Viken, Nyseth and Viken2009; Larsen Reference Larsen2010; Phipps Reference Phipps2010; Viken Reference Viken, Grenier and Müller2011) as well as contributing to local financial wealth (Gibson et al. Reference Gibson, Waitt, Walmsley and Connell2010; Andersson et al. Reference Andersson, Armbrecht and Lundberg2012; Herrero et al. Reference Herrero, Sanz, Bedate and del Barrio2012). Participation in festivals is thus motivated by getting away from everyday life (Bauman et al. Reference Bauman, Sawin and Carpenter1992; Stoeltje Reference Stoeltje and Bauman1992; Gursoy et al. Reference Gursoy, Sprangenberg and Rutherford2006; Pivac et al. Reference Pivac, Blesic, Stamenkovic and Besermenji2011) and committing to symbolic and mythological images and narratives, myths and tales (Alver et al. Reference Alver, Gilhus, Mikaelsson and Selberg1999). Consequently, festivals are often based on – and reconstructing – (sub)-cultural festival identities in relation to profile, niche, style and shared taste (Bjälesjö Reference Bjälesjö, Berggren, Greiff and Horgby2009; Gyimothy Reference Gyimothy2009), which has been understood by terms such as ‘festival spirit’ (Bjälesjö Reference Bjälesjö2002), ‘secular re-enchantment’ of culture and nature (Guneriussen Reference Guneriussen2008), and often related to branding (Carah Reference Carah2011). Industry-related research has been concerned with the interplay between public, performers, music genres and the music industry (Wicke Reference Wicke1990; Negus Reference Negus1998, Reference Negus1999; Frith Reference Frith, Frith, Straw and Street2001, p. 26, Reference Frith2007; Karlsen and Brändström Reference Karlsen and Brändström2008), as well as the relationship between the mass media and festivals (Robertson and Rogers Reference Robertson and Rogers2009). There have also been studies focused on the significance of the festivals for young people's quality of life (Packer and Ballantyne Reference Packer and Ballantyne2011), on the ecological sustainability as an identity factor (Jenkins et al. Reference Jenkins, Rios-Morales and Cervera2011) and more specific studies regarding festival tourism and the tourist industry (Regan et al. Reference Regan, Carlson and Rosenberger2012). Festival ownership is also explored within the scholarly literature, including studies that show that festivals are often connected to local initiatives and voluntary commitment, even though many of them are in private ownership (Andersson and Getz Reference Andersson and Getz2009). They can thus have a far looser association with one specific location than is perceived by the average participant (Van Aalst and van Melik Reference Van Aalst and van Melik2012).
A number of conceptual approaches are used in these studies. Festivals have been analysed on the basis of their performative features, in which events or activities are staged and often recontextualised (Briggs and Bauman Reference Briggs and Bauman1992), for instance when old local traditions are inserted into new contexts. An interactional perspective, for example, emphasises individual moments, experiences and situations, such as in relation to culture integrated into play (Huizinga Reference Huizinga1949) and how participants collectively construct social norms and rituals into action and interaction (Goffman Reference Goffman1955, Reference Goffman1959, Reference Goffman1967; Garfinkel Reference Garfinkel1967; Kendon Reference Kendon, Drew and Wotton1988) or with a form of implicit negotiation (Strauss Reference Strauss1993). Festivals can also be understood from this perspective as activities that maintain or reflect the moral aspirations of society (McCracken Reference McCracken1998), such as spiritual values, which can be difficult to maintain in everyday life. Perspectives may be based on physical and social structures – habitus (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1979) – or more phenomenologically directed towards the significance of experiences. Matters relating to identification and identity are relevant perspectives both in relation to taste, style and tradition and in relation to subcultural and tribal tendencies (Maffesoli Reference Maffesoli1996) among festival regulars who regenerate the festival community year after year. These types of conceptual lenses provide us with an opportunity both to engage with empirical nuances of the music festival in a solidly academic manner and to extend the relevance of such analysis into a more generic understanding of societal mechanisms on the micro level. The sociology of festivals thus rests on extreme cases (Flyvbjerg Reference Flyvbjerg2004) for the understanding of fundamental social processes in society in general
Experiencing festivals
The emotional experience of the festival community spirit triggered my curiosity on the festival as a sociological case study in contemporary life. This was especially the case in the very first year of a medium-sized rural music festival, the Storås Festival in 2004, which awakened my sociological interest in how the festival community was evolving. I was struck by the fact that a fresh festival, without any history, established routines or expectations, in a matter of hours could make the impression of a well-settled community. I was particularly taken with an intense form of communal presence, both in the concert area and in the festival camp,Footnote 1 and with a number of communal phenomena – which I had observed in my ethnographical research in the field of organisation since the early 1990s – becoming more explicitly visible at the festival. I have also investigated the phenomenon of community in adjacent research concerning environments and meeting places (Tjora et al. Reference Tjora, Henriksen, Fjærli and Grønning2012; Tjora and Scambler Reference Tjora and Scambler2013) and in connection with the use of communications media (Tjora Reference Tjora2011). Ever since my first period of fieldwork at the two first Storås Festivals in 2004 and 2005 it was evident that the rock music festival provided an important case for the explication of my broader theoretical interest in how community is represented in an extreme and/or paradigmatic case (Flyvbjerg Reference Flyvbjerg2004, p. 128). Extreme cases are located at the extreme end of a research topic (for instance extremely open communities), while paradigmatic cases are those which would be able to provide a direct contribution to a theoretical sensitivity for the topic (for instance demonstrating situational community as an ideal type).
The study applies organisational ethnography (Tjora Reference Tjora2009), research of immediate environments (Tjora et al. Reference Tjora, Henriksen, Fjærli and Grønning2012), and of meeting places (Tjora and Scambler Reference Tjora and Scambler2013) as resources in the analysis in the form of observed parallels and contrasts. The questions I have asked in connection with such communities are:
• What characterises festival communities?
• How is the festival community developed and maintained?
Because it has not been my wish to investigate a specific community, but rather the festival community as a type of phenomenon, I have spread the study across many festivals, all of which present rock music, but which otherwise display slightly different characteristics.
An interactional approach to community
Community is an important empirical reality and theoretical concept. Within sociology we find quite different approaches to this issue, such as Tönnies’ (Reference Tönnies, Clausen, Deichsel, Bickel, Fechner, Schlüter-Knauer and Carstens1912 [1887]) ‘gemeinschaft’ and ‘gesellschaft’ as descriptions of social and commercial community sentiment. Newcomb's (Reference Newcomb, Cartwright and Zander1960) ‘proximity principle’ suggests that people form relationships with individuals who are in (coincidental) proximity and that such relationships nevertheless appear from the outside as non-coincidental group formation. Such communities can also be related to special locations, which can thus assume a considerable significance, as so-called ‘third places’ (Oldenburg Reference Oldenburg1999, Reference Oldenburg, Tjora and Scambler2013) or in the workplace, as a ‘workers’ collective’ (Lysgaard Reference Lysgaard1961). Delanty (Reference Delanty2003) is concerned with community as communication, in which belonging is expressed through unstable, floating, open and individualised groups, often with multiple and overlapping social ties and with the opportunity to participate in or to withdraw from groups. Delanty thus manages to also include the communities of social media and more subtle forms of identification. Zygmunt Bauman is far more sceptical in his analysis, in which he perceives a conflict between the desire of the individual for individual freedom, and security in the community (Bauman 2001). For the festival ethnography, Maffesoli's (Reference Maffesoli1996) studies of group formation are of some interest here. He argues the case that large-scale community is in decline but is being replaced by a form of consumerism and socialisation based on new forms of group formation, in what he terms ‘neo-tribes’. According to Maffesoli, experiencing community can be diffuse but strong, and is often connected to common interests, tastes and activities. Sharing a taste for something (which deviates from the taste of the majority) can distinguish a group of individuals from the mass and thus indicate an element around which they can be unified, even though this occurs on the basis of (seemingly) individual preferences. Neo-tribalism is expressed in mass culture, in which the transitory is an important point. Our social lives are distinguished by membership in a number of overlapping groups, which provide space for temporary identifications (Maffesoli Reference Maffesoli1996).
In addition to being concerned with community, I rest my analysis on ethnomethodology, i.e. Garfinkel's ‘everyday sociology’ from the end of the 1940s, systematically presented in Studies in Ethnomethodology, in which he defines ethnomethodology as:
the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life. (Garfinkel Reference Garfinkel1967, p. 11)
Ethnomethodology is based on the empirical investigation of practical and everyday activities and situations, generally emphasising interactional details. As seen above, Garfinkel is concerned with everyday actions and interactions as ‘artful’, which he relates to a form of practical skill acquired by individuals through participating in a community. Ethnomethodology is concerned with this practical skill itself, and with how it is developed, but also with the manifestations or objectification of this skill (Berger and Luckmann Reference Berger and Luckmann1966) as fundamental social facts, or as something that creates and forms community. Even though this approach as such is to be regarded as methodologically individualistic, it is not the members as individuals who are of interest but rather the actions of members and how these produce small-scale interaction systems (Goffman Reference Goffman1963), a framework that defines the situation (Goffman Reference Goffman1974) and large-scale organisational structures. Ethnomethodology is concerned with ‘specific and trans-individual practices […] by which realities take on their self-evident and often thing-like realness’ (DeNora Reference DeNora2014, p. xv), in my case, how this thing – a festival community – is artfully enacted in a specific location across a few days.
Of special relevance is Emile Durkheim's (Reference Durkheim1965 [1915]) proposition of a relationship between ritual behaviour and the adherence to social order, putting collective veneration of the sacred at the heart of his theory of social solidarity. In the case of rock music festivals we will expect that the cultic practice of fandom and shared rapture in front of a concert stage is an important source of a ‘collective conscience’ of the festival community.
Anselm Strauss’ negotiation concept (Reference Strauss1978, 1993) is also of interest here, in that he refers to how different social orders are temporal, mobile and unstable, rather than absolute limitations (Strauss Reference Strauss1993, p. 255). Here, Strauss's most significant point is that a social order is a form of activity, including those structures that are regarded as firm routines (Strauss Reference Strauss1993, p. 254). In the updated version published in 1993, Strauss renames ‘negotiated order’ as ‘processual ordering’, suggesting that we should refer to ‘a theory of acting rather than a theory of action’ (Strauss Reference Strauss1993, p. 258), placing an extreme emphasis on the acting itself. Within an interactional understanding of community I am inspired by Strauss in an understanding of various communal aspects as continuously created and recreated by the community's members through their (inter)actions. This means that the festival – as community – is constantly being developed and (re-)created by its participants and that the organisers can only shape the festival by attempting to influence the actions and patterns of action of its participants.
Sampling festivals
The festivals that I have studied have been chosen pragmatically, based on interest, timing and location. It has been a premise of my autobiographical method that I should be able to enter as a complete – enthusiastic and engaged – participant rather than as a fly on the wall with purely academic motivation (cf. Anderson Reference Anderson2006). The choice of general rock music festivals and of festivals with a musical profile inclined towards the goth/industrial genre have therefore been obvious choices, since these are the music styles in which I have a considerable personal interest. In addition to this, from the very first of the festivals in my selection, Storås in 2004, I have been aware that the distinction between festival camp and concert area was an essential one in respect of the community. It was therefore necessary to study both camping-based festivals and city festivals in order to investigate the significance of camping. The following festivals were selected:
• Storås Festival (each year 2004–2011): Norwegian camping-based rock music festival at the rural village of Storås in the Norwegian county of Sør-Trøndelag, emphasising the mystique and romance of the forest. Ever more varied musically as the years go by, from alternative rock to more folk, along with contemporary circus and pranks ever since the beginning, as well as a steadily increasing range of family activities. Around 10,000 participants in 2007.
• M'era Luna Festival (2006): German camping-based rock music festival at Hildesheim with a goth/industrial profile and a tendency to produce the feeling of a staged costume ball. Around 17,000 participants in 2006.
• Arvika Festival (2006): Swedish camping-based rock music festival with rather more emphasis on industrial and electronic than the majority of festivals. Around 15,000 participants in 2006.
• Træna Festival (2008): Norwegian camping-based rock music festival far out in the sea on the island of Træna, with a broad range of music and emphasis on the island's majestic landscape. Camping both on a regulated site and in ‘the wild’ including everything from a church concert to a concert in a cave.
• Øya Festival (2008–2012): Norwegian city festival in Oslo, always with a large-scale programme (rock/pop/hip-hop) on four stages, and a central location at Middle-age Park.
• Bukta Festival (2010–2011): Norwegian city festival in arctic Tromsø, with a good programme (rock) on two stages and an idyllic location on the south side of the island.
• Pstereo (2008–2012): Norwegian city festival in the heart of historic Trondheim, between the Nidelven River and the cathedral, with a solid concert programme (rock/pop) on three stages.
Taken together, these festivals form a good empirical platform, both in terms of breadth (different festivals) and with a certain homogeneity (rock music festivals).
Research methods
The festivals have been studied by deploying observational methods. I regard such an ethnographic approach as ideal, but often as very demanding (Tjora Reference Tjora2006), and with the need to reflect on one's own role, in this case as an ‘insider researcher’ (cf. Bennett Reference Bennett2002; Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2005). A personal discomfort about not belonging to a situation, concerns about ethical issues and problems in understanding what is taking place within the broader context while at the same time capturing the details are just a few of the expected challenges of observation studies (Marshall and Rossman Reference Marshall and Rossman1995, p. 80). Studies of festivals, like other studies of public spaces, however, have the advantage that one's own presence is essentially legitimate. The choice of observer role, summarised by Gold (Reference Gold1958) as complete participant, participant as observer, observer as participant or complete observer, is therefore more straightforward than in many other situations: that of being complete participant becomes the immediate choice. There is no need to construct a role, like gym teacher Goffman in his study of life at a mental hospital (Reference Goffman1961) in order to legitimise his presence both to the other staff and to the patients. There is no need to put on a white coat, as in hospital studies where this is necessary for moving around the wards (Tjora Reference Tjora2012, p. 56). One of the challenges of festival observation, however, is that of documentation – note-taking or similar – especially when entering completely into the life and doings of the festival community on a par with the other festival participants. My ethnographic attitude is in this case deeply interactive, drawing inspiration from the autobiographical turn within social anthropology in the 1980s (Okely and Callaway Reference Okely and Callaway1992), in which special emphasis was placed on taking account of the researcher as a ‘positioned subject’ in the field. When I describe my observation as deeply interactive I mean that I am not only concerned with being a complete participant in the social situations in order to be able to ‘capture them’ as data, unaffected by my research intention and without so-called observer effects (a possibility in the case of a hidden observer), but rather that I am concerned with entering fully into the role of participant, as analytic autoethnographer (Anderson Reference Anderson2006), reducing my research orientation and using experiences, memories and reflections over a period as my empirical approach. In methodology literature we find examples of different forms of dynamic observation (Tjora Reference Tjora2012, p. 61), in which the observer moves together with the observed by means of ‘work-along’ (Wadel Reference Wadel, Fangen and Sellerberg2011), ‘go-along’ or ‘walk-along’ (Kusenbach Reference Kusenbach2003) and ‘shadowing’ (Czarniawska Reference Czarniawska2007). My complete participant role in the festival studies is also dynamic, so in using equivalent terms we can describe it more precisely as ‘participate-along’ or in some occasions ‘party-along’. Since rock music festivals are open for everyone with a valid ticket and since my research position has been purely participatory (as complete participant), without performing interviews for instance, challenges of negotiating access have been irrelevant. Not having to pretend to be a rock music enthusiast, being an ‘insider researcher’ has made it ‘uncomplicated to meet and spend time with people’ (Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2005, p. 138).
The attempt to develop a more generic understanding of the festival community has for me entailed participating in different festivals over a period of time, essentially on the basis of cultural and social involvement, in addition to a parallel and retrospective analytical reflection over my own experiences and how these were formed within sociologically relevant practices. Naturally, documentation is a challenge in such observations. The act of taking notes along the way removes the researcher from a whole-hearted participatory position and places him immediately in a fly-on-the-wall situation. This is not permissible. The use of still images and occasional video recordings has, however, been seen to function well for festival ethnography. Being photographed with a still-image camera (compact camera or mobile phone) is experienced as unintrusive and relatively normal in a festival context. Photographing concerts and festival friends, as well as photographing various situations that arise, is absolutely accepted and is part of normal festival practice. Video filming has also become normal, especially as most people carry mobile phones or video-recording devices, which many people take advantage of. The proliferation of private concert recordings on, for instance, YouTube is an illustration of this. In what I term deeply interactive observation, images and video clips not only form direct documentation but also function as a memory aid in describing situations and the particular backgrounds for experiences.
The analysis follows a strategy, in which the observations have inductively triggered analytical ideas and concepts, which I test out more deductively within existing or new data. After developing initial ideas about, for instance, the daily rhythm of festivals, the subsequent curiosity was directed more specifically towards the transitions between phases, as emphasised in this paper. The analysis here is based both on ‘realist tales’ (detailed events) and ‘impressionist tales’ (impressions and experiences) (Van Maanen Reference Van Maanen1988, p. 48). I am presenting empirical data both as extracts of situations, retold from memory, images and video clips, as well as more generic descriptions accumulated over the course of many festivals.
The daily rhythm of the festival
One of the clearest generally observable tendencies of the camping-based festivals in my study is the various phases of the festival day. I propose therefore to use this as a framework for the analysis throughout this section. I have termed the phases: early calm, brunch, pre-concert, concert and nachspiel. Even though these overlap chronologically, the different phases possess specific characteristics and indications of the transitions between phases. In city festivals (or in general festivals that do not feature camping) only the concert phase is usually hosted by the festival. Any pre-concert and nachspiel needs to be organised by the festival participants at other arenas. In my subsequent description of the phases I will be using general (cumulative) characteristics from various festivals, images and individual descriptions of situations. While previous festival research has been concerned with the phases of the festival as planned and traditional ‘event structures’ (Stoeltje Reference Stoeltje and Bauman1992), in my work I am directing my attention more towards the daily communal rhythm, which may be quite different from the organisers’ plan.
Early calm (about 8–11 a.m.)
It is quiet in the camp; the sun is beginning to warm up the tents. Nearby sounds can be heard from people who are coming to life, opening their sleeping bags and opening tent zips in order to allow in air. The cold night-airFootnote 2 the previous evening persuaded most people to pack themselves in tightly, but once the sun begins to warm the canvas there is something close to panic in the quest for fresh air. Quiet giggling can be heard here and there from people who are still carrying traces of the previous day's alcohol or who see a self-ironic humour when it loses its grip. The festival camp shop has opened and some people are on their feet, going off to get a coffee, juice or baguette in this extremely limited, but highly appreciated provision.
Despite the primitive and limited toilet facilities there is no queue at them so early, but the occasional female festival goer calls in to empty her bladder while the males run off to the nearest bit of forest for the same purpose. Some people take their mattress and sleeping bags out of the tent and lie outside in order to get the most air and enjoy the emerging warmth of the sun. The occasional radio can be heard from the tents and there is a constant blanket of bird song, but first and foremost the festival camp is dominated by a kind of deafening silence from the sleeping majority.
Brunch (about 10 a.m.–2 p.m.)
Most people have got up, or at least are awake. There is a steady queue at the toilets and the shop has a constant flow of customers. Many people have put up camping chairs and tables, often in groups of several campers; primuses are at work, cooking coffee or eggs and bacon for the more advanced. Others, with a slightly simpler infrastructure, are sitting on their mats outside the tents and enjoying a newly bought juice and coffee. People are constantly wandering between the tents and stopping for a chat, sitting down together with their neighbours and being offered coffee. It is a quiet but also social atmosphere, in which opinions of the previous day's concerts and any particular high points are discussed: ‘Didn't you get to that concert? It was a real highlight!’ When there are many artists who are not universally familiar, there will have been a variety of different choices from yesterday's concerts. That some visitor or another may have missed something is rapidly pointed out by the others. Some people go off to the nearest shop to buy daily papers, pop, snacks and beer, while others have already returned from there and are handing out items that have been bought for others (it is normal to run errands for each other).
The newspapers are read, often hunting for write-ups of the previous day's festival concerts, and these and other matters are discussed. Brunch features a gentle tempo and relaxed atmosphere, but at the same time a communal need for food, drink, toileting and a quick wash and toothbrushing. Many people have been camping together by putting their tents facing each other with a kind of communal courtyard in the middle, with tables and chairs, picnic blankets and sometimes even sofas and other furniture; and perhaps a party tent. During brunch, these communal areas come to life, with both the camp's participants, chance (known and unknown) guests who drop in and any overnight guests from the previous evening.
Pre-concert (about 1–9 p.m.)
Much of the festival is lived in the festival camp; in particular the period I have termed pre-concert is an essential aspect of the social life of the camping festival. During this phase, any necessary convalescence from the previous day is now under control, brunch and personal hygiene has been taken care of, as well as any purchases of food and drink for the afternoon and evening. There is a relaxed atmosphere between the tents; people are wandering around chatting to each other, some throwing frisbees and playing ball, others setting up chairs, tables, portable stereos and other items between the tents. Precisely when the pre-concert phase begins varies from camp to camp and from festival to festival, but this transition is very interesting from a sociological point of view. My observations suggest that it is the first beer of the day that often marks the transition from brunch to pre-concert. Once one of the camp's residents opens the first beer of the day and of the camp, this action easily infects the others so that the transition becomes collectively generated, often over a very short period. It is seldom predetermined who is going to be the camp's first ‘beer-opener’ and there is often an element of implicit negotiation between several participants concerning (when) the first beer should be opened, in order to avoid ‘drinking alone’.Footnote 3 Even in those cases where such collective agreements are not reached, we see that the first beer-opening is rapidly succeeded by the next – an event that can be understood in light of threshold models (Granovetter Reference Granovetter1978): the act of opening the first beer indicates a potential transition to pre-concert, which is confirmed by other members of the camp by picking up their own drinks in a form of collective moral obligation. The social ‘contagion’ between campers is absolutely present, but varies from one festival camp to another, dependent especially on the population density of the festival camp. The pre-concert of the festivals is closely related to the vorspiel to a night on the town, where alcohol bought at the supermarkets or liquor storesFootnote 4 makes this stage of the festival less expensive than it would be if individuals went into the concert area earlier. At the German M'era Luna festival, dressing-up and make-up is a widespread collective activity between the tents. With small tents and large dresses, dressing becomes an outdoor activity for many. Similarly, the lack of reliable mirrors means that it is not only sociable but also practical to apply make-up to each other rather than to oneself.
Based on my observations, there is no doubt that the pre-concert provides the greatest social festival high points for many people, even though it is the good concert experiences that are to a greater extent turned into explicit, media and official success factors. For participants in camping-based rock music festivals it is the pre-concert that is the most intense social phase, with continuous interaction between the camp's participants, neighbouring camps, the friends of friends and casual guests.
I have indicated that the pre-concert phase takes place between about 1 and 9 p.m. – a substantial portion of the festival day – but this also has considerable variations. In addition to a negotiated starting point, my observations show a constantly returning and more explicit disagreement about the departure from the camp's pre-concert and to the concert area. An indication of the importance of the pre-concert is that this departure is often significantly delayed in relation to an original plan, which is generally set up in order to be in time for a particular artist on the programme. The pre-concert features a steady intake of alcohol, which contributes to a loose-mouthed atmosphere and a greater-than-usual extrovertness.
Do you want to feel my boobs?It is early evening at the Storås Festival. The concerts have not yet begun and 8–10 of us sit around a big camp-fire area between the festival camp and the concert area, grilling sausages that we have brought and drinking beer. The sun is shining and it is warm; there is a good pre-concert atmosphere and easy conversation between friends and strangers around the fire. A woman around 25 years of age comes up to the fire and asks what we think about her breasts, while lifting up her T-shirt for an assessment (she is not wearing a bra). And yes, most people around the fire, both women and men, concur that these are fine, solid items and she asks whether anyone would like to feel them. A number of individuals do this, as she takes a tour around the fire with her offer. There is still a relaxed mood. The breast-proud woman awakens a light-hearted spirit, but no fuss, mockery or other negative sanctions. Having received acknowledgement for her attributes she wonders into the concert area and we wish her a good festival evening.
Have you got a condom?I am on my way from the camping area and towards the concerts when a young couple, about 19–20 years old, come half running, excitedly towards me. ‘Have you got a condom?’ asks the female. ‘No, I'm sorry’, I say. They run on, whilst he says to her: ‘I said he wouldn't’. ‘Had to ask’, she says, ‘he might have’ and they run onwards into the camp. I feel sorry that I couldn't help them.
The extrovert attitude is demonstrated in that the friends of friends, casual passers-by and ‘camping neighbours’ are integrated into improvised parties, with a greater generosity and openness than is experienced elsewhere in most Western societies. Sharing alcohol (as in buying rounds) is not common among young Norwegians, but is standard procedure at the festival camp. The question of whether someone has brought a bottle himself or is just dropping in and receiving hospitality is rarely brought up as an explicit topic. The social norm is a form of ad hoc sociality in which a ‘generalised exchange’ (Emerson Reference Emerson, Berger, Zelditch and Anderson1972, p. 57) between an undefined number of festival participants creates an atmosphere of generosity. Everyone expects (in the long run) to offer to anyone and to be offered to by anyone.
A constantly recurring theme is the relaxed attitude to the agreed time of departure to the concert area. When an artist that one has planned to see is due on stage in five minutes and the pre-concert atmosphere is very good, the concert may be dropped in favour of pleasant company at the camp. In this respect the physical layout of the different festivals also influences behaviour. A short distance between the festival camp and the concert area makes it possible to move back and forward between concerts and pre-concert, and it is often observed that some participants from a camp ‘hold the fort’ while others attend some early concert or another before returning to the pre-concert. At other festivals, the festival camps are located a significant walk away from the concert area such that it is more natural to go to the concerts and stay there for the rest of the evening.
To what extent the whole camp has a joint departure to the concerts or splits up varies, both on the basis of the composition of the camp (several sub-groups), diverging musical preferences and random variations of mood at the time. Some festival participants never make it from the camp and into the concert area, generally due to a combination of good atmosphere and alcohol and that the positive ‘festival flow’ is felt to be optimal there and then. In this case, the pre-concert moves directly into the nachspiel.
Concert (about 5 p.m.–1 a.m.)
The rock music festivals’ concerts generally follow a tightly packed programme, usually featuring several stages, so that participants can enjoy concerts continuously. All rock music festivals offer food and drink for sale in connection with the concerts, with somewhat differing profiles – local and often ecological at some festivals, and well-known chains at others. Not surprisingly, beer in particular is a natural part of the rock music festivals. The combination of a tightly packed programme on several stages and the opportunity to consume food and drink in the area creates a certain people-flow between the various stages, the sales outlets for food and drink and toilet facilities.
This dynamic forms the basis for a series of random meetings and chats between festival participants; often between old acquaintances with shared festival interests but an otherwise separate existence. Even without arranging meetings it is often the case that one knows who one will bump into at the different festivals simply by knowing each other's musical taste and festival preferences. Since festival programmes are generally organised without an overlap between the artists, so that a concert on one stage begins as soon as the encore is finished at another stage, simultaneous movements of participants evolve between the various stages. This is especially evident at the some of the sold-out city festivals, in which a very large number of people will be moving around a relatively small festival area. Both synchronised movements of participants and chance encounters in queues at kiosks and toilets or in the crowds in front of the concert stages invite various forms of interaction. Among specific forms of social interaction we can mention random conversations over urinal containers and more physical interaction in ‘moshpits’ in front of the stage at more hard-hitting concerts. The urinal containers are a version of a urinal without roof or walls, in which maleFootnote 5 festival participants can effectively empty their bladders. The low types make chatting possible while people stand and urinate, since individuals face each other and urinate in individual containers or in different holes in the same container.
Conversation across the urinal container: I am at the Storås Festival in 2008. One of the local folk/dance/rural/pop artists, Terje Tysland, is playing on stage and I am making use of a urinal container that is an extension of the main platform's public area. Two others are urinating in the same container; they are standing facing each other and one of them calls out ‘this is just great – Tysland at Storås – real music at last’, with which the other was in complete disagreement: ‘No, this is a let-down – I don't know whether this was ironically intended …’. The other maintains his position: ‘No, this here is music’. I don't get involved in the debate, but maintain the observer role and remain standing and thinking over the situation and the disagreement. Firstly, it is quite natural for the most enthusiastic member of the public, with a few beers inside, to comment on the concert that was currently happening. The resulting discussion also shows the booking-related nuances between urban/hip and rural/folk, with which the Storås Festival has had to deal to an ever-greater extent.
Moshpits are particularly found in more extrovert concerts (especially in the areas of punk, metal and industrial), in front of the stage, in which a form of aggressive dancing involves, among other things, running into each other. Even though this can be quite rough, there are clear rules regarding behaviour in the moshpit: people who fall are to be picked up, or perhaps picked up and propelled out of the pit if necessary; people should not grope each other or hit anyone, and an apology is to be offered (by a glance) if this occurs accidentally; anyone trying to get out should be helped; no-one should be pulled into the pit who is standing on the sidelines, and so on.Footnote 6
Characteristic of the concerts is also a form of focused awareness (Tjora Reference Tjora2004) from the public towards the stage, which creates possible themes for (random) conversations about concerts and artists: people share experiences and interests and casual conversations can thus always be started by airing experiences from a newly finished concert.
Nachspiel
Festival concerts often end around midnight, while the atmosphere is still at its highest for many of the participants, after many good concert experiences and for many people a steady intake of alcohol. The concert area is emptied of people and the festival camp is invaded by participants hungry for their nachspiel, happy to gather around the larger camps with party tents, sofas and other well-prepared nachspiel facilities. Many festivals have a variety of festival camps with differing rules for quiet at night, so that the longest and noisiest of the nachspiel may be concentrated into a few specific areas. In these areas it is possible to find a succession of nachspiel, with individuals constantly moving between various parties. The integrating attitude seen in the pre-concert is often even more explicitly visible during the nachspiel phase, where people will often drop in at any party without anyone reacting to this.
Drumming nachspiel at M'era Luna: The final concert has died away on the last evening at M'era Luna. I am at the festival camp, on my way to my own tent (in order to have an early night before the day of departure), but at a distance I hear a rough-and-ready rhythm orchestra. It draws me in. Someone has scraped together buckets, boxes, sticks, broken tent poles and miscellaneous items, and a sort of improvised rhythm orchestra has grown up, in the middle of the night, in the midst of the festival camp. With many years of experience as a drummer I join in, find a stick and hit a bucket together with some others; and due to skill level and amount of effort I keep being allocated noisier instruments and a kind of leadership role. More and more people arrive, a few disappear, but the orchestra grows steadily. A few people turn up and remain standing as an audience, supplying beer to us, the ‘performers’. There is a good atmosphere and a good deal of noise. I take part for more than an hour, but eventually have to give up because of the rather rough tools and resultant bleeding hands. The whole orchestra dies out not long after. It's starting to get late for everyone, but it was a good and intense improvised finale to the festival.
The rhythm orchestra is a good example of the social immediacy that is characteristic of the camping festivals and which can reach its peak in the limitless nachspiel phase. All kinds of communal activities can arise wherever and whenever. In the following discussion I will deal on a more theoretical level with how the festival creates community and is created by community, to put it simply.
Festival community as social rhythm
In my observations of the camping-based festivals, the five different phases described above are a general characteristic. We may wonder how it is that these are recreated not just year after year but also in such a similar manner between the various festivals. In the following discussion I will examine more theoretically this community and how it arises and is maintained.
One important observation relates to how the daily rhythm of the various festivals is created from the very beginning, even in respect of a completely new festival. The newly established Storås Festival in 2004 was by no means behind the more established festivals, or indeed the Storås festivals of later years, in terms of experiencing the distinct phases. In light of Strauss's theory of negotiation (Reference Strauss1978, 1993), this can be understood by suggesting that the participants were, from the first moment of the new festival, constantly negotiating through their actions how the Storås Festival was to be. In that individual festival participants are bringing their experiences from other camping-based festivals, and in that these participants will more clearly demonstrate festival skills, a form of social order emerges at the first Storås Festival, formed by the actions of all the participants, but to which experiences of other festivals contribute. As such, patterns of interaction in the various phases are contagious between festivals and create similarities between them, making it also possible for an entirely new festival to exhibit a feeling of social continuity and predictability.
The term festival skills is worth reflecting over. I use this term to designate practical skills based on experiences from previous festivals. A high degree of festival skills may be expressed through generally self-confident behaviour on the part of an individual or group, as a more concrete expression in the form of a sophisticated camp (for instance with festival buses, party tent and sofas) or through individual symbols (for instance, a large number of festival arm bands or T-shirts from previous festivals). A so-called ‘community of practice’ (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991) thus arises both among and between the camps, in which implicit master–apprentice relationships develop between those who are assumed to have a great deal of festival skills and those who regard themselves as newcomers. Even though this skills base is not explicit, it is expressed through the above-mentioned signs as well as by means of conversations about previous festival experiences, which is a regular topic of conversation during brunch and pre-concert phases. To some extent, festival skills have certain neo-tribal tendencies (Maffesoli Reference Maffesoli1996) in that experienced festival participants are distinguished from the others as a kind of tribe with recognisable signals, symbols and expressions, without necessarily having social bonds between them. That inexperienced festival-goers also attempt to surround themselves with similar symbols and moderate their behaviour in a conscious self-presentation (cf. Goffman Reference Goffman1959) means that one cannot take for granted that those who appear to be experienced individuals are necessarily so. This ‘social acting’ will, however, accelerate the convergence of behaviour and among other things contribute to a clearer definition of the different phases described above. For instance, if one sees that the (apparently) experienced hippies in the festival bus open their first beer and thus indicate the transition to the pre-concert phase, one can attempt to appear experienced by being the first in one's own (neighbouring) camp to do the same thing with great self-confidence. A threshold-theoretical understanding (Granovetter Reference Granovetter1978, p. 25) allows us to assume that the experienced festival participants will often lead the way, with a lower threshold than the inexperienced for initiating the transition to the pre-concert phase. Those who perceive themselves as inexperienced will allow themselves to be influenced and within this understanding, too, a form of convergence is created in the transition between phases. The desire to demonstrate festival skills contributes to distinct patterns of behaviour, which are manifested, for instance, through the phases. Such an observation indicates how an interactionist perspective (emphasising the details in what shapes action) and ethnomethodology (emphasising the significance of everyday skills) contribute to an understanding of how the different phases are maintained across various festivals, as historically continuous and as seemingly established even in entirely new festivals.
In the same way that these phases cross-infect from one festival to another, the various camping-based festivals generate certain forms of predictable festival community. These are more open than many other communities: a casual passer-by is a potential guest (especially in the pre-concert and nachspiel phases). They are characterised by generous awareness rather than by civil inattention: if someone wishes to show off her breasts it is more appropriate to praise them than to pretend not to notice the individual and write her off as mentally unstable. The opportunity for private life is limited: intimate ‘business’ is difficult to conceal, thus creating a distinctive openness. It is better to make a humorous comment if one encounters another's ‘backstage’ (Goffman Reference Goffman1959), such as naked buttocks visible through a tent opening, than to remain silent, politely unobservant or with uncomfortable tolerance. Various forms of shared interests create focused awareness (Tjora Reference Tjora2004) and the basis for a number of interaction pretexts (Henriksen and Tjora Reference Henriksen and Tjora2014) as a platform for informal communication between individuals who do not originally know each other. Mutual experiences of artists or a joint attention to clothing style (not least at a festival such as M'era Luna) can create a safe basis for contact. Discussing a current concert across the urinal container becomes entirely natural and needs no excuse.
The rock music festival community in general can be characterised by specific forms of communication such as more direct body language, identification with a particular type of music style and wardrobe that is typical for the festival, activities such as camping and constant alcohol consumption, a situational understanding featuring a great deal of openness and a situated community based on simultaneous physical presence. Even though I have used many different cases in this paper, it is the social life in camping-based festivals such as Storås and Træna that I find most interesting. The Danish architect Jan Gehl relates the social potential of a city to life between the buildings, in an interface between private and public spaces (Gehl Reference Gehl1971). Similarly, in my analysis I find that it is precisely in the space between private and non-private areas that the social foundation of the camping-based rock music festival arises. With the lack of sound insulation and limited distances between tents, together with the anticipated common interest as a prerequisite for festival participation, the private and non-private flow even more together on the festival camp. I am connecting observations on action-based community in organisations with, among other phenomena, awareness (Schmidt Reference Schmidt2002) and attention (Goffman Reference Goffman1963; Tjora Reference Tjora2004), which are constantly negotiated into being through different forms of social interaction. When seen with ‘interactionist eyes’, the festival community emerges and is maintained by means of the converging patterns of actions and social sensitivity (awareness) among the participants, on the basis of joint interests and specific physical prerequisites, ‘props’ (Johansen Reference Johansen1992) and ‘stages’ (Goffman Reference Goffman1959), created by the festival areas. The situations described in this paper are precisely such expressions of how social and physical conditions are played out in a ‘performance’, by which the interaction is the festival itself. In a more general sociological sense, an analysis of the festival forms a social micro-cosmos, in which to observe how interaction shapes communities, or how action defines structures. The rock music festival as such becomes a paradigmatic case (Flyvbjerg Reference Flyvbjerg2004, p. 128) for the relevance of ethnomethodology, with the observation of how artful practices, i.e. becoming a skilful rock music festival participant, are enacted (and negotiated) socially. Festival skills are therefore not individual competences (something that you have), but socially situated and interactional (something that you negotiate and may be perceived as having). It is not limited to each specific festival, but reproducible in any situation within the rock music festival genre.
The inspiration for my music festival research and for this paper was not least an observation of my own joy in festivals, and beyond this a more sociologically motivated curiosity regarding how one can understand the predictable upbeat feeling provided by festival participation, as a rule completely independently of the quality of the concert programmes. Through a detailed analysis of how the various phases of the festival day arise, not just at each individual festival, but as a general tendency between festivals, I conclude that a predictable festival community is a significant factor in relation to the attractiveness of the festivals. The festivals create greater space for a sense of solidarity and perceived collaboration, a communal ‘gemeinschaft’ (Tönnies Reference Tönnies, Clausen, Deichsel, Bickel, Fechner, Schlüter-Knauer and Carstens1912 [1887]) as a relief from the more ‘gesellschaft’-based rational thinking otherwise prevalent in modern everyday life, or as a form of emotional community (Max Weber's ‘gemeinde’ in Maffesoli Reference Maffesoli1996, p. 12). With the emphasis on interaction offered in this paper, it is reasonable to regard the festivals as situational communities, in which greater openness and a shared daily social rhythm create more substantial frameworks for legitimate interaction than we find elsewhere in society. The joy of the festival, experienced by people as individuals, is fundamentally bound up with being a part of this situational community, in which participants include each other more directly and openly than elsewhere. The detailed study of the social life at the rock music festival demonstrates the potential of a more generous collective attitude. I suggest that this is one explanation for the popularity of such festivals. Festivals also become paradigmatic cases of how societies may be developed and maintained on basis of (inter)acting out expected performances.
With the observation of the social rhythm in the festival camp, my analysis demonstrates that the collective ritual of the rock music festival is not limited to a cultic practice of fandom in front of concert stages, but includes a celebration of community in the festival camp. Hence, ‘spontaneous communitas’, to apply Victor Turner's (Reference Turner1969, p. 132) term, occurs among participants through implicitly negotiating this social rhythm continuously. While rituals of fandom (i.e. attending concerts, buying artist merchandise, and so on) are ‘constitutive local orders’ (Rawls Reference Rawls and Rawls2002, p. 59) of any rock music festival, camping-based festivals include the convergence of social rhythms outside stage areas. Experiencing that festival participants extend the pre-concert phase, with delayed entering of the stage areas, indicates that the ‘social flow’ of ‘festival communitas’ is well maintained outside the actual concert situation.
The various phases of the social rhythm of the camping-based rock music festival are significant as ‘constitutive practices’ by which ‘recognisable social orders’ (Rawls Reference Rawls and Rawls2002, p. 6) of the festival are produced. In other words, the social rhythm, as it is interactively and artfully produced between participants, makes the festival recognisable as a festival. In a Durkheimian sense, the festival ritual, which produces a profound sense of connectedness between participants, is to be found between the tents in the festival camp.
Acknowledgements
The author offers many thanks to Alex Broom and the anonymous referees of Popular Music for constructive comments on a previous version of this paper.
