Rock Festival

A rock festival, pop festival or rock fest is considered to be a large-scale rock music concert, featuring multiple acts performing a sometimes diverse range of popular music including rock, pop, folk, and related genres. As originally conceived in the late 1960s, rock festivals were held outdoors, often in open rural areas or open-air sports arenas, fairgrounds and parks, typically lasted two or more days, featured long rosters of musical performers, and attracted very large crowds. However, as soon as they became popular, promoters took considerable license with the terms “rock festival” and "pop festival", and some events advertised as such took place in indoor arenas on a single evening featuring only a handful of acts.

By no means the first outdoor music festivals, rock festivals nevertheless took on a unique identity and attracted significant media attention when they first appeared. Preceded by several precursor events in the San Francisco area, it is generally acknowledged that the first two rock festivals were staged in northern California on consecutive weekends in the summer of 1967: the KFRC Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival on Mount Tamalpais (June 10–11) and the Monterey International Pop Festival (June 16–18). The concept caught fire and spread quickly, not only across America but the world.

According to Bill Mankin, in their dawning age rock festivals were important socio-cultural milestones: “… it would not be an exaggeration to say that, over a few short years, rock festivals played a unique, significant – and underappreciated – role in fueling the countercultural shift that swept not only America but many other countries . It seems fitting… that one of the most enduring labels for the entire generation of that era was derived from a rock festival: the ‘Woodstock Generation’.”

In the 1980s a minor resurgence of festivals occurred with charity as the goal.

Today, they are still usually open air concerts spread out over several days. Many are annual events sponsored by major corporations.

Besides rock, many feature multiple genres of music such as pop, dance, and electronic. Some owners of radio stations produce radio festivals that only include bands of a specific style of rock (according to what the station wants to promote). The size of these events means that large temporary infrastructures are installed, supplying amenities like water-based ablution facilities.