The assortment of rock concerts that are world events these days is quite widespread. Every continent in the world has a rock festival that it can be proud of. If you love music and you love to travel as well, you need to check out the event traveler’s rock festival guide before planning for a holiday in rock.
Below are the highlights of one of the largest and most famous rock festivals in Europe.
- Background
The Sziget Festival (Sziget is a Hungarian word meaning Island) is one of the top five major cultural and music festivals in Europe. The festival takes place in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The interesting thing about the location is that the event happens on a very green, two hundred and sixty six acre island on the Danube River. The island also hosts over a thousand performances every year.The festival takes place over a period of about seven days in the month of August. The Sziget Festival has its origins as a low-key student event that began in 1993. Currently the festival is one of the five most prominent music festivals on the European continent, attracting a large international audience.Apart from music, the festival has become synonymous with dance, cinema, theatre, tennis, tattooing, football, indoor rowing, bungee jumping, rock climbing and foosball. This make the event a must go for all sorts of people with different interests to sustain their curiosity and interest throughout the 7 days of entertainment.
- Attendance
The first event was mainly headlined by Hungarian artists and had an attendance of about 43,000 revelers.The second event in 1994 got notoriety by getting the label the European Woodstock and had artists from the Original Woodstock based in New York performing at the event. The 1994 festival was attended by 143,000 visitors, a leap of about 100,000 more attendants as compared to the first year’s event.By 2001, after a steady growth in attendance each year, the festival had over 365,000 people attending the events over the period of the festival. Ever since, the average attendance throughout the years has been between 365,000 and 385,000 with more years experiencing the upper limit of this average.
By 2011, this festival had ranked as one of the five best festivals in Europe. Last year, 2014, the Sziget Festival, experienced the highest attendance yet, with about 415,000 attendants attending the festival over the 7 day August period. The main artists at the 2014 even included;
- Korn
- Outkast
- Blink-182
- Jimmy Eat World and
- Prodigy amongst many other artists.
The festival organisers have also spawned similar concerts that have become highly successful in Transylvania, Romania and in Kiev, Ukraine. You can find other great events in UK’s creative times guide on rock concerts.
- Stages and the musicThe main stages at the Sziget Festival have different attractions and the main ones include:
Mainstage: It hosts the main and most popular world artists.
World music Stage: Hosts world music with all sorts of background including African music and European folk music.
Party Arena: Hosts party music
Europe Stage: Is mainly focused on popular European music
A38/Wan2 Stage
Metal Main stage
