A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors and are  often inclusive of other attractions such as food  and merchandise vending, performing art and social activities. many festivals are annual, or repeat at some other interval. Some, including many Rock Festival, are held only once. Some festivals are organised as for-profit concerts and others are benifits for a specific cause. Another type of music festival is the educative type, organised annually in local communities, regionally or nationally, for the benifit of amateur musicians of all ages and grades of achievment. Though music festivals are often thought to be one of the modern man's greatest inventions, their age is actually quite ancient. In fact, some of the first known music festivals took place in roughly 4500 B.C. in ancient Egypt. In the thousands of years since those first musical festivals have grown and adapted to changing times and evolving technologies, becoming safer and more widely avaliable than ever before.

 

Ancient Festivals: The gatherings thats started it all.

It's important to remember just how hard is was to hear music in a "mainstream" way before modern technologies like the radio, the television and today's iPods, iPhones and tablets. In order for the music to go "mainstream" it had to be performed at large festivals or concerts for a truely massive number of people. The ancient Egyptians discovered that pretty quickly, and they’re credited with hosting some of the first major music festivals in human history. Ancient Greece followed, as did Europe in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, music festivals were already a pretty mainstream thing.

 

Modern Music Festivals: The 20th Century Takeoff

While music festivals certainly took place during ancient times, as well as more recent centuries, their massive scale was not truly achieved until the mid-20th century. Several festivals throughout the 1930s and 1940s, like The Berkshire Festival in Massachusetts, set the stage for these developments later on. It was 1969′s Woodstock, however, that truly set the modern tone for musical gatherings. Woodstock was a gathering of tens of thousands of people united by common musical and political interests, bound together by what is still argued to be some of the best music ever created in the 20th century. Its vast success turned into a commercial empire, and it showed that modern festivals could become a dynamic sociopolitical force to promote musicians, ideas, and gatherings, that could change the world.

That’s where things still stand today. Major music festivals come together to raise money for major causes, to promote ideas and celebrate milestones, and to unite a generation by bringing together the biggest forces in popular music. From the ancient festivals of Egypt to the epic yearly gathering known as Glastonbury, music festivals have long been a driving force of the collective cultural experience.