(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents An Aquarius Exhibition – 3 Days of Peace & Music" was the title of the event that took place in the northern part of New York State from August 15 to 18, 1969. The more one hears about the chaos and the ingenuity that made up the legendary Woodstock Festival, the more astonishing it seems that it took place at all. Today, it seems incredible that 400 people gathered as they did on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in the state of New York – completely without violence – when the events around the country would indicate the opposite. An unknown amount of cannabis (and LSD) may have done its part to help make the event peaceful, but the energy that brought the festival participants together went deeper.
"Woodstock Nation"
The idea of organizing a music and arts festival outdoors began to take shape three years before Woodstock took place. John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman, both in their mid-20s, decided to make some extra bucks. They had met while playing golf; Roberts had inherited half a million dollars, and rumors gradually spread around the country through underground newspapers and magazines.
Today it seems incredible that 400 000 people gathered as they did
did – completely without violence.
There are now two Woodstock films, one from 1970 and one that will be released by US television company PBS this year to celebrate the festival's 50 anniversary. Over 25 years after the first film made it big at the Academy Awards in 1971, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Michael Wadleigh's original Woodstock – a fabulous documentary composed of 190 kilometers of footage from 16 cameras and the clip of 7 directors – "created the notion of the 'Woodstock Nation' that existed for three days and was absorbed into American myth." The music alone filled a six-page album that sold for gold a few weeks after its release.
The new Woodstock (2019), directed by Barak Goodman, has a completely different mood. It was created for the history series of PBS's "American Experience," and last year it was advertised that it would be about the people who attended the festival, and not those who performed. So what are we getting now? For the most part, today's votes and historical recordings are arranged chronologically. The film is full of camera wandering through the crowd and on the fringes where people found, prepared and shared food, along with old photographs of teenagers and young adults. Today we hear the same people telling behind the camera, in a slightly older version of themselves. The director does not want to leave the historical track, but the words can become too didactic occasionally. The movie is perceived as enlightening, but where are the feelings?
The Woodstock Festival was a rock festival that was held 15-18. August 1969 in Bethel, near the city of Woodstock in the state of New York in the United States. Woodstock was initially organized as a protest against the Vietnam War. Under the motto "Three days of peace and love", it was to be a response to the atrocities that took place in Vietnam. Among the 32 artists who performed were The Band, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Ten Years After and Jefferson Airplane.
(source: SNL)
Love was the answer
The new Woodstock is made with many different voices, all off-camera, and often from the men who organized the event. They describe how the festival grew bigger until no one had an overview anymore; others talk about war and recruitment; a few women tell us what Woodstock meant to them. It's hard to keep track of who's saying what, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter: These voices represent thousands.
"One of the events that affected everyone was the war in Vietnam."
Woodstock participant
I 12. In the sequence of the film, someone says, "One of the events that affected everyone was the war in Vietnam." One man describes how scared he was as a 17 year-old for the military summon; a television clip reports the week's number of dead and missing, and in another reporter Dan Rather announces the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., then the murder of Bobby Kennedy.
The violence that then defined the people based on class and complexion; the dramatic effect of the pill on women's sexual behavior; the general rebellion against the "establishment" – all these themes move through the film like a bird drifting on air currents.
But for three days, love was the answer: 400 lived on a desolate field and blankets, filling the roads and crowding around campfires at night. Then the food ended and the storm came, and small communities around the field tried to feed these young people as best they could. It seems that farmer Max Yasgur's conservatism included respect for freedom and freedom of speech for people he did not necessarily agree with. He helped provide them food too; he was committed and supportive.
Looking back 50 years, it is perceived as naive, naive in a beautiful way, that 400 people expected music to bind them together, and that love should protect them and provide for them. Some lived from day to day without anyone understanding them, but here they found fellowship: Festival participant Laureen Starobin says: “I could escape into my music. It was such a comfort to me. " Woodstock brought her along with people like herself.
Still, it was the Aquarius's [aquarius' editorial] magical energy that protected the festival from violent gatherings at that time, but Woodstock lives on, since film teams and professional sound people in attendance created the material that established the Woodstock myth in retrospect. Their archive is a valuable resource!
