The Woodstock Music And Art Flair

The Woodstock Music and Art Flair is the most famous and iconic music concert held in 1969. The concert, or the music festival, was organized by four inexperienced event promoters. Many artists who played here went on to become famous musicians later on as most artists who performed at Woodstock were not well-known to the people before Woodstock. Some such artists are Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, even Pandit Ravi Shankar.

The trouble for the festival started almost immediately when permission was denied by the towns where it was supposed to be organized. But the problem was solved as a farmer had lent his farming land for the concert. But the Woodstock name remained although it was not staged at the originally desired location. Only a few tickets of the concert were sold. But on the opening day of the festival, some 400,00 odd people showed up. The organizers were overwhelmed and soon stopped checking tickets and let everyone in. For these 400,000 people there was virtually no security. It started raining the second day but the crowd only bonded more and the festival continued.

The concert became a concern for the locals of the countryside. They feared that large gathering of people would cause damage to their property and disrupt their peaceful lives. There weren’t enough medical facilities, hotels or eating arrangements anywhere near the site. It is only normal to fear the gathering at such massive scale. but after the concert, the people were surprised to find no damage to their property and many even managed to make a profit by using their own homes as hotels and by providing food to the weary visitors. There were no reports of violence. This is believed that such a peaceful gathering was possible because all the people were consuming heavy dosages of marijuana and psychedelics.

Many musicians and acts received fame through Woodstock. Santana was not well-known outside San-Francisco until Woodstock. Carlos Santana and his band then went on to become one of the major artists of the counter-culture movement across the country. The Grateful Dead hadn’t achieved their legendary status until then. Their lead told that Woodstock was a terrible experience. The amplifiers were not working properly and singing to 400,000 is no easy job. After waiting for days in traffic, they reached the site but couldn’t find anything to eat backstage that wasn’t glazed with LSD. Ravi Shankar was a major figure in India. He played a several hours long set alongside the hippies of the counter culture and rose to international fame and stardom.

Woodstock was advertised as “Three Days of Music and Peace” and it turned out to be just that. In 1994, Woodstock was organized again. It was better and more successful this time but less legendary. In 2008, Woodstock happened again but was nothing compared to the original. Now a museum has been created at the site which educates people about the music in the 60s and how it created the counter-culture movement where American citizens criticized their own government for the Vietnam War.