Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music

As we all know now, the idea blew up into a festival that was portrayed in the Academy Award winning documentary "Woodstock." The concept of a documentary arose when the men made an offer to Warner Brothers to make a movie about the upcoming event. Kornfeld asked Warner Brothers for $100,000 to allow them to do the movie. Warner Brothers took them up on the offer because they felt "it could have either sold millions or, if there were riots, be one of the best documentaries ever made" (How Woodstock happened, 1994). The Woodstock rock concert was described as "a symptomatic event of our time that showed the tremendous hunger, need, yearning for community on the part of the youth" (Big Woodstock, 1969, 17).

"Video Exclusive: McCartney on How Beatles Got Hendrix Gig at Monterey Pop Fest."Examiner.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2014. "Jimi Hendrix Biography | The Official Jimi Hendrix Site."

Detroit: Gale, 2001. Student Resources in Context. Web. 22 Jan. 2014. "Woodstock Music Festival Epitomizes the 1960s, August 15, 1969-August 17, 1969."

It is like a whole new world for most people each time they attend. Believe it or not The Coachella Music and Arts Festival started out as a protest in 1993. The band Pearl Jam protested against Ticketmaster and all the auditoriums they controlled in Southern California in November of 1993. They chose to host in their concert at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. It wouldn't be until six years later that the festival would be founded by Paul Tollett with help from Goldenvoice, a promoting company and brings thousands of fans out to the Colorado Desert of the very first Coachella Music Festival in 1999.

"Statement on the Historical and Cultural Significance of the 1969 Woodstock Festival Site." Woodstock Preservation. 21 Sept. 2001. www.woodstockpreservation.org/SignificanceStatement.htm. (March 31, 2014). "Janis Joplin."

"What Happened at The Woodstock Festival of 1969? "About.com 20th Century History. About.com, n.d. Web. 01 June 2014.

In the summer of 1969, a music festival called, “Woodstock”, took place for three straight days in Upstate, New York, with thirty-two musical acts playing, and 500,000 people from around the world coming to join this musical, peaceful movement. Woodstock started out being a small concert, created to locally promote peace in the world, by the power of music and its lyrics. Now, Woodstock is still being celebrated over 40 years later. The chaotic political climate that the ‘baby boomers’ were growing up in is most likely the reason for this event becoming of such an importance to the world. The violence of the Vietnam War, protests at Kent State and the Democratic Convention, and the assassinations contributed to an ‘out of control’ world.

The Counterculture 1965- 66. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from The History of Rock Music: 1955-1966: http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt16.html Starr, L., & Waterman, C. (2010). American Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stillman, P. A.

McPherson, Ian. “The Salt of the Earth: 1955-1960 R&B-Derived Rock & Roll.” Time Is On Our Side. 2000-2008. Web. 11 April 2014.

It reached its peak in the summer of 1967, and by then it had over 300,000 followers who referred to themselves as the "love children" or the "gentle people". They gathered in San Francisco, the hippie center of the world, during the summers. During these "Summers of love", they lived on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, sitting in groups along the street and strumming their guitars (Frike 62). These "love children", otherwise known as the hippies were the result of the antiwar movement that was sweeping the nation during the Vietnam war. Hippies were resolutely against the war.