Music festivals are having a hard month. Scandals hit Chengdu recently after organizers of the Big Love Music Festival disappeared with millions of dollars, record label Modern Sky has canceled plans for its annual Beijing festival in August and dates for Midi's Blue Festival in Rizhao, Shandong Province are still unannounced.
For now, this leaves the Inmusic Festival alone in the Zhangbei grasslands to redeem the festival season.
This may be disconcerting for some, as every summer since 2009, woes about the three-day rock festival in the grasslands have made headlines: The lack of green and clouds of dust earned the festival its first moniker "Dirty Fest," heavy rainfall and mud diminished crowds the following year, while hours of standstill traffic killed the buzz in 2011.
However, fans keep making the 250-kilometer pilgrimage from the capital to the northwestern Zhangbei grasslands for what the festival does right - camping, cheap food, laid-back local authorities and three solid days of live music for 150 yuan ($23.55) a day (120 yuan presale).
"If you'd have asked me now to start a music festival from nothing in two months time, I would tell you absolutely no way," said Inmusic magazine executive editor Li Hongjie, who is one of the 10-strong core crew behind the festival.
Back pages
After the Chinese edition of Rolling Stone disappeared from shelves in 2007 after a single issue due to a legal technicality, Inmusic magazine rose from its ashes. Although Western pop music publications such as Hit, X-Music, and SoRock had nearly 10 years on Inmusic, the young magazine was able to secure a 10-year contract with the Zhangbei local government to organize a music festival.
"We loved music, and we were writers, and when starting out we thought that was enough," said Li. "What we didn't know was that to run a festival, you have to be a mechanical engineer. There are a million working parts that if one fails, the rest can fall apart."
But they have learned some lessons in the process. This year, the two-lane road leading to the festival grounds has been widened to four, parking lots expanded to accommodate over 100,000 cars, while local government has spent millions planting grass since last year.
Li added that the power will also be green, as wind turbines placed on the grasslands will provide supplemental power for the festival.
Print
Save