Barcelona, Spain
Mission Title: Festivalism - Primavera Sound Festival
Mission Date: 31-05-2008
SCRIPT
- Go to the Primavera Sound Festival.
- Talk to people, both locals, and visitors, about Barcelona’s music scene and how it affects life and the attraction to Barcelona as a place to live.
- Ask organizers why they choosed Parc del Forum? Is there any specifical reason?
- Is Parc Forum a quarter where city's investors put lot of capital and why is Primavera so important to them? Where did it all start from?
- Interview musicians and/or the director of the festival about coming to play in Barcelona, their experiences in the city, and their views on the festival.
- Be sure to get good footage of the entrance to the festival, the stages, the performances, and the people who have come to see the music.
- Think about your mission as an adventure, stay there till the festival is over, taping what's left on Primavera's "battlefield." don’t forget to dance.
TRAVEL BAG
How has Barcelona become the nexus for innovative music in Europe?
Music festivals sometimes seem like not much more than an excuse to list a bunch of bands together. Devoted fans much prefer the intimacy of clubs than the all day heat and sun of an exhausting outdoor festival. And though there’s something of a bargain in the sheer number of acts, the ticket prices still ain’t cheap.
All that said, there’s something special about Barcelona’s music festivals. Vienna was the seat of 19th century melodymakers but for the 21st the capitol of Catalonia has become the main European nexus for musical innovation. The city’s policies have attempted (and so far successfully) to take Barcelona from fading (and a little dodgy) seaside city to a contemporary and creative urban metropolis, thriving with cognitive-cultural industries.
Local support for music festivals (and of course the beautiful parks and Mediterranean climate) played an important role in this transformation. Along with Sonar, the Primavera Sound Festival marks an important event in its continued success and the city’s policies to become attractive to musical innovators and (more importantly) their savvy, creative fans. And lest we get too fuzzy, the increased popularity of the city (and its higher rents) are starting to push some of the creative innovators and marginal spaces out of the city they helped remake. Can Barcelona maintain its creative capital and quality of life as it becomes increasingly bourgeois? How many of the performers at the Sound Festival actually live and work in Barcelona?
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