What people are looking for and what they find at European music festivals

Today, every self -respecting European country has a summer music festival. Often not one. You will see the schedules of the tour of some top musicians - a gallop in Europe. You will go to the sites of festivals, almost everywhere - Sold out. "New" decided to figure out what is the reason for such boom. What are people looking for at music festivals? Adventures, discharge, answers to questions? Are musicians and organizers able to give these answers? Some say the musicians are blown away. No topical texts and a civil position in general.

At the end of June, I went to look for the topical. First-on the nova rock famous for the loud rocks in the town of Nickelsdorf under Vienna, and then-to the Polish Auschwitz, where Life Festival Oswiecim has been taking place for eight in a row.

Dancing on the bones

Bones. White, gnawed chicken bones, hidden in the field on which wheat once grew. Perhaps this is my first impression of Nova Rock. I stood on the bones, and around the Apocalypse field raged. Giant damn wheel. Tarzanka tower. An attraction with people in an iron cage. Pillars of windmills. Dust haze. The cacophony brain torn - three scenes plus a platform with karaoke. People in scarves instead of gas masks, costumes of pink hares on a large hairy body, skillfully torn tights, bathrobes, panties, without panties. Hundreds, thousands of people. This year, more than 220,000 people visited Nova Rock.

When someone with the head of a plush monkey slapped me slightly in the back place and yelled something in German, I realized that I had to urgently run. And she ran to look for food. They didn’t give me food - they didn’t accept the money on the field. I was sent to the booth - change money to a special plastic card. The card could be paid for everything - from raw meat and any alcohol to the damn wheel and tattoos. I stopped at a Chinese noodles and slipped into the bar:

- Water without gas.

“Sorry, but we don’t sell water,” a sweet girl told me.

- And where is it sold? I specified.

“Nowhere,” she calmly poured golden beer to a fairly golden -haired man. - Water is there. -She waved somewhere towards the far fence.

Water on the field was also poured in a booth - from a hose. Free, but in their own glasses of those who wish. I did not have a glass. I returned back to the field and sat on the trampled grass with my noodles.

Five minutes later, next to me, a guy of about twenty years old was dumped from a wheelbarrow for construction garbage.

“Sit here,” friends said to the guy. It was clear even in German. The guy was slightly tipsy. Probably, my noodles aroused confidence among friends.

“Where are you from the white sneakers from?” - He playfully switched to English. The guy’s sneakers were black, like everyone else at this festival. Even if initially they were a different color.

“From Russia,” I answered.

-Oh-oh, Putin? - Of course, he specified, screwing another bone into the ground. In the hands of the guy there was a paper box with sharp chicken wings. - I would also like to travel on a bear.

I was no longer surprised - not so long ago, Koreans were interested in the bear. I googled, and really - the same president, without a top, only instead of a horse - a bear. Another Internet meme, but I did not begin to dissuade the guy, very then the Koreans were upset.

“And what,” he became interested, “can the Russians go abroad freely?”

“Yes,” I replied, “if the bears do not devour along the road.”

There were many Russian speakers on the field. At the concerts of the headliners, from Blink-18 to Green Da, the only flag fluttered in front of the faces of the soloists-the Russian one. Even in the press zone there were four: one of the vein, the other from Yerevan, two of Ukraine. Periodically, a bearded guy in a cap with the inscription "Chechnya" also joined the company. The guy - a political refugee - lived in Vienna and worked at a festival in Staffa: he sent and accepted buses.

They discussed my white sneakers, the ban on social networks in Ukraine, ways to get to Bekstage through a hole in the fence. The guys go to Nova Rock for many years in a row. They live in a tent town, like almost everyone here.

“Tell me,” I asked a question that had long been tormented me, “why is such a terrible dirt here?”

I was still impressed by camping at the main entrance. It was not a tent with garbage, it was garbage with interspersed tents. Right in the middle of a monstrous trash from iron cans, food remnants, flying bags sat on plastic chairs and rested people. On Nova Rock there was another camping-quite decent, and even a tent hot for those who are too lazy to drag a tent with them. But this one - right at the entrance to the festival - overshadowed everything.

Well, this, guys say, the same thing every year. The administration is trying to fight, it introduces all some systems with payment for garbage, but everything is to no avail. Every morning the field is put in order, but in the evening everything is repeated again.

Probably, the garbage on Nova Rock is natural. They do not say about this festival: “I was on Nova Rock,” they say about him: “I survived it.” Here they throw out the garbage from the head too. At least, its overabundance. There are almost no rules, restrictions, strict requirements of morality. I almost did not see the police here.

But there is, for example, a wall of death. This is when at the concert of the Epica group fans first leave a huge empty square among themselves, and then, according to the soloist, rush into this hellish hole at each other - at Slam.

Or here is the composition of Fuck EVERYTHING from the repertoire of the Suicide Silence group. When a soloist with a torn face and a convulsive body throws and throws into the crowd the name of his hit, and the crowd is all to one, shakes in the air with the middle fingers. Feet fly over their heads, shimmers over the edge of the beer from giant plastic mugs, more similar to a container for the surrender of elephant urine. Last gap, stop music. “Dunke Sean,” the soloist calmly says to the crowd.

Fuck is the most popular word of the festival. It burns on the back of the Blink-182 group. It, of course, is in the repertoire of each group. Fuck The Trump is almost the first thing that shouts into the microphone Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day. They do not give press conferences here, the musicians talk from the stage-if there is something. No Corruption !! - The same Billy, the author of the “American idiot” of 2004:

“I don't want to be an idiot from America,
Part of the nation that the media rule. ”

And calls for fans to remove phones: "Live a moment!"

“Propaganda blinds us,” System of a Down rumbles. And then the BYOB - "Bring your bombs." And the crowd chants:

“Why don't the presidents fight themselves?
Why do they always send the poor? "

And again people are dragging over their heads, and beer pours, and middle fingers get into the air. Some are with manicure.

I asked the organizers if the artists have any limiters. So to speak, moral or there is a political stop list.

“We have freedom of speech in Austria,” they answered me. “But we are sure that no one needs politically incorrect or racist speeches.” Yes, we do not have such extreme groups.

Well, I survived Nova Rock and left for Auschwitz - I had enough extreme.

The city in which they smile

Musical festival in Auschwitz. It turned out to be difficult to explain this to some of my friends. However, it was interesting to me myself - what came out of this idea?

The idea did not seem strange either to Chris de Burga, nor Erica Clapton, nor Sting, nor Peter Gabriel. The latter in 2012 called the organizers the “guardians of the dark mirror”-the memory of who we are and who we can be, in every sense. This year monsters were expected no less.

The first thing that came to my mind on the stadium field: "The Jazz Manor." True, today, the reggae led by Shaggy, the author of the already legendary Boombastic, was mainly given here.

Families on bright green grass. Mom with strollers. Boys with a sign "Let's hug." The boys hugged with doctors who calmly ply in the stadium. I can’t even imagine why they could need it. By my amazement, I saw here a whole portable hospital, of course, empty.

She looked into the corners. In one - they painted. Any inscriptions on the stencil on white T -shirts. The other was a pavilion of social initiatives. Amnesty International collected in the framework of the # nienawiš cit program aimed at "changing public consciousness and law in counteracting hatred and violence motivated by prejudices." The queue was periodically gathering for the delivery of signatures.

Unicef ​​and Pah talked about humanitarian activities. The latter - including in Ukraine. They told games. Some cards on the floor, puzzles. At the stand of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, children painted Jewish symbols. Special people every minute collected garbage. I finished me off the tribune for the disabled. Almost right in front of the stage.

And also - a girl in the Ukrainian flag. It turned out that the Ukrainians came here at the invitation of the festival. So to speak, to form another image of Auschwitz in a young head. They study Polish in their Dnepropetrovsk in the Polish center. German students lived near the Ukrainians in the hotel - according to the same program.

- Well, how are you here? I asked the girl.

- Super !! - She was all shining. - And tomorrow it will be even better.

And the next day in the press center, the latest superstar Laura Pergolitszi or LP in a widely unbuttoned shirt with cucumbers, with a glass of coffee in her hand, and an unchanged schucher on her head spoke in the camera:

- I cannot imagine even one person killed by a bullet ... But, you see, life did not stop after the Holocaust. If the people who survived this were able to continue to live, then we must do it ... Look how many festivals are held, hundreds of new ones every summer season. This is something that we can do together in a world that is more and more separated, because we are all immersed in ourselves. - She buried herself into the smartphone and stood her fingers. “I think all that we can continue to speak, to be yourself and bring the point that there are people who differ from us ... We just have to stop being afraid.”

Laura is an open representative of sexual minorities. Just three days ago, she gave a sololer in the Moscow Crocus-City Hall.

“Not so long ago you were in Moscow ...” I began, and Laura blurred in a smile, “now Auschwitz.” Should musicians talk about politics?

“If they want,” she thoughtfully disheveled the hair. - It is interesting that today we are not so listening to musicians or artists, as they did during the time of Bob Dylan or Diego Rivera. People who wrote and painted what was wrong in the world. But I think, and today a lot of people do it. I foresee that in the future there will be more. I think no one is trying to avoid politics in songs. As for me, I sing about relationships and emotions. But at the same time I can express my life position by just leaving the house. For me, this step will also be political.

Half an hour ago, she played a concert. She sang with the field. I caught furry toys. She screamed: “Oh my god, I sing on the same scene with Scorpions! I love them! " In the front row, there were women in T -shirts with the inscription “Total Freedom. LP ". They probably stood here for three hours - the field was a bit.

Well, then there were scorpions. Great and still powerful, with a powerful video, tearing militants and enveloping ballads on the front edge of the stage. Somewhere between the “BIS” the director of the festival, he is his ideological inspirer and music journalist Darek Matsilork, handed the scorpions the first peacekeeper in the history of the festival. Prize for the exceptional contribution to the spread of the ideas of the world. Scorpions went for the “wind of change” - “the unofficial anthem of the fall of communism in Europe, which after 25 years gives people from all continents hope for the best world.”

“Music is a light shining through dark clouds,” Klaus Mine said to the crowd. - Today you all came here and joined us in the name of love and the world - this is a statement of life! The world should never forget what happened here many years ago. We must leave this certificate for future generations.

As soon as Auschwitz, I follow the moskva sounded under the gray sky, huge goosebumps ran along my feet. People raised sheets of white and red cardboard over their heads - a Polish flag. Somewhere in the middle of the song the music fell silent, and the entire stadium in unison sang: Take me to the magis of the Moment on a Glory Night. It really was magic. In Auschwitz, somewhere very close to the former death camp.

“You know, ten years ago, skiing in Austria, I met one guy from Hamburg,” Darek told me. It was half the first night, we sat in an empty office of the burdened festival. - We talked - who is where, everything is as usual. I said that I was born in Auschwitz. He asked: "What kind of Auschwitz?" “A great place near Krakow,” I replied and added: “Perhaps you know another name - Aushwitz.” He was in absolute shock. "This is impossible!" He said. "Why?" "Because there is only a cemetery." “No, my friend,” I said, “this is a beautiful city, with more than a 700-year history, in which more than 38 thousand people live, work and smile.” Probably, this was the starting point with which the festival began.

Today, the Darek has a whole collection of photos of artists with a sheet of A4 format in their hands. On the sheet is the hashtag of the festival: #ArtistSagainstwar. Artists against the war.

- I thought about how we can combine the tragic, dark past and future. This is not only about Auschwitz, Poland. There are still many places in the world where people live in an atmosphere of terror, fear, armed conflicts. Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine ... All these organizations, people, artists, artists here are the guides of our peaceful message and ideas of the festival. Tolerance, the fight against xenophobia, racism. Music is a universal language that every person understands, a bridge that connects generations and people of any nationality.

Alena Tolina

PS

“The voice can change everything that surrounds us, molecules in the room,” Lp said that evening. And if this voice sounds from the stadium? Perhaps he is able not only to knock out nonsense, give relief or hope, but also to change the image of an entire city - at his own, molecular level. If you believe this voice, of course.