Glasto – the largest music festival
The Glastonbury Festival, a.k.a. Glastonbury or Glasto, is the largest green field open-air music and performing arts festival in the world. The festival covers an area of over 900 acres and in 2007 hosted over 700 live performances on over 80 stages. Over 50,000 people attended the Glasto in 2007. Glastonbury is most known for the contemporary performances but the festival also features dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, poetry and the visual arts.The history of the festival dates back to the 1970’s when Michael Eavis, the founder, organised the Pilton Pop, Blues, & Folk Festival. Over the years the festival grew to its current status with the help of fundraisers and entrepreneurs. Many key players in the making of the festival are Andrew Kerr, Arabella Churchill, Thomas Crimble and Bill Harkin who were heavily influenced by the hippie ethics and the free festival movement in the 1970’s.
The festival takes place South West England at Worthy Farm between the small villages of Pilton and Pylle six miles east of the town of Glastonbury. The area has a number of legends and spiritual traditions as well.
This years Glastonbury Festival is June 22nd – the 26th and has been sold out since October. The tickets were all gone four hours after they went on sale! This years headliners are U2, Coldplay, and Beyonce. Other performances inlcude MGMT, The Flaming Lips, Imogen Heap, Muse, La Roux, Phoenix, The Black Keys, The Temper Trap, and the list goes on and on.
The Glastonbury festival is a state of mind, a world that only comes aorund once a year. It’s so big you wouldn’t be able to experience everything even if you went five years in a row. Once your’re there you wont ever want to leave. You’ll ask yourself “Why cant life always be like this?â€. The diversity is overwhelming. It’s a world without judgments, where hygeine and clothing does not matter.
