Sziget festival:
in search of Europe's fields of dreams
Why
traipse through Glasto's swamps when you can watch your favourite bands
play on an island in the Danube? Garry Mulholland travels to Hungary to
find a festival gem.....
More than just a muddy field ... Sziget festivalgoers pitch their tents on the banks of the Danube.
It's a balmy midnight in
Hungary
and you are walking through a forest lit with fairy lights. To your
right there's an impromptu 50s-style sock hop, DJed by a man in a tuxedo
who has set up his turntables in the front of an original Mini Cooper
that's been cut in half. To your left, delighted whoops are greeting a
buff gay dance troupe doing an energetic routine to the strains of
Enough Is Enough by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. In front of you, a
drunk couple who can't be any older than 17 are trying to duet on
Paradise City at the heavy metal karaoke. You're just about to make up
your mind whether to stick with one of these or proceed to your original
destination of the Roma tent, when your nose catches a whiff of chilli
noodles, then chicken burrito, and then what appears to be a giant hog
roast.
-
Sziget festival
-
Budapest, Hungary
This is the
Sziget festival, Budapest, and it truly feels like Paradise City.
I hate
festivals.
Or, at least, I thought I did. The experiences they offer appeared to
be, on the one hand, drinking overpriced lager in some godforsaken
field, trying to avoid drug casualties and terrible indie bands. Or, on
the other, going to one of those right-on, middle-class festivals, being
ordered around by health and safety police in what looks like a giant
Holland & Barrett, while bored children are dragged around by
parents who want to relive their student days by seeing James play Sit
Down, and, you know, sitting down. If God had meant gigs to be in fields
he wouldn't have invented the roof.
So Sziget was a surprise. The
event is held every August on Óbuda, a 266-acre woodland island in the
middle of the Danube. It began in 1993 as a Budapest version of
Glastonbury for 40,000 people, with an emphasis on local music, arts and
civic organisations. Now it's a major event attracting 350,000 people
from all over
Europe,
with headliners including David Bowie, Radiohead, the Cure and the
Prodigy, and boasting a 2011 bill that includes Amy Winehouse, Dizzee
Rascal, Kasabian and the National.
But despite its increasingly
populist booking policy, a short, controversial period in the 90s when
it was sponsored by Pepsi, and estimates that 70% of its audience now
comes from outside Hungary, Sziget still manages to retain its
quirkiness and multicultural ideals.
All of which raises a
question: is Sziget evidence that European festivals are now a much
better bet than the UK's glutted market of expensive corporate rock
beanfeasts? Isn't a week dipping in and out of a vibrant and slightly
insane festival while sightseeing in Budapest a more valuable experience
than three days in a mudpatch in England watching bands that have all
the charisma of a burger van in a car park? Or did I just happen to have
a nice time?
As managing director of Ostfest Promotions, Elroy
Thümmler is one of the prime movers behind a number of European
festivals, including Sziget. The fact that he's based in Holland says
much about the international aspirations of the new breed of eastern
European events. He thinks recent history lends them a more idealistic
feel. "Festivals such as Sziget and
Exit,
in Serbia, originated after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Milosevic.
So there's a desire to make them festivals of freedom. It's different
from the commercial attitude in western European festivals."
Best
to ask one of the natives about all that. Rock photographer Veronika
Moore was born and bred in Budapest but has lived and worked in England
for 10 years. Even though she's a committed fan of UK festivals –
Bestival gets her biggest thumbs-up – she can't stop going back to
Sziget, having been to 10 of them, more often as punter than snapper.
"Sziget is more than just a music festival. It's a cultural event. You
can spend a whole week at Sziget without going near the main stage.
You'll find every nationality there, from Irish and Ukrainian to Turkish
and French, and all of these people bring their own bands, theatre
groups, food and culture. One part of the site is given up to civil
organisations. Religions, charities, psychiatric help, self-help, all
non-profit. They have a Jewish tent with real Rabbis doing a Jewish
disco. One year there were hardcore punk and metal bands playing thrash
versions of Hare Krishna chants. You wouldn't see this stuff anywhere
else. Sziget has the weirdness factor."
Martin Elbourne worked as
part of the Glastonbury team for 25 years, as well as being a consultant
for Guilfest and Jersey Live, and co-promoter of Brighton's excellent
multi-indoor venue festival The Great Escape (key element: roofs). He is
a man you'd expect to protect the honour of the Great British Rock
Festival. But even he admits the festival sun is rising in the east.
"It's become part of the mix for the young music fan. Go to a different
country. The beer's cheaper. And eastern Europe seems to be getting
together more and more good festivals. They have to get good locations
because they rely on western tourists coming in. Exit and Sziget have
fantastic reputations. If I wasn't committed to stuff in the UK for my
work I'd happily toodle round eastern Europe for a month going to
festivals."
But for the most battle-hardened fest-vets, it's never
about the country you happen to be partying in. Thomas H Green was
encouraged to write about music by his love of raving in fields. He's
been writing about festivals around the world since the mid-90s.
"Wherever you go in the world," he says, "festivals fall into two
categories. There are festivals put on by music lovers that eventually
become sustainable businesses. And there are people who want to make a
lot of money and put on a big gig in a field and hire some burger vans.
The latter doesn't have any sense of joy. So, wherever you are, if
you're unlucky enough to go to one of those, it will lack that spirit of
anarchy and freedom that festivals are all about."
Festivals are
also about money. The money that buys you the biggest headline bands.
The money to be made from those burger vans. And, most importantly, the
money a fan can afford to spend in search of summer fun. Moore says she
spends less money going to Sziget than she does going to a festival in
the UK. "Price is the massive difference," she says. "Not even the
ticket price, but the drinks and the food. I find it really strange
that, at most UK festivals, you have to pay extra for things like
getting your phone charged or a programme. You pay £150 for a ticket and
then they try to charge you another £4 for a programme? It's just not
right. I come out feeling ripped off."
A weekend camping ticket for this year's
V festival
at Hylands Park in Essex costs £175. Parking is extra. A programme is
also extra. You can't bring in food or drink, so you have to buy what is
on-site. A pint of beer will cost you around £4. The nearest town is
Chelmsford, which is two miles away, so unless you can be bothered to
head there for your meals, you're at the mercy of whatever prices are
charged.
But although you can bring food and drink to Sziget, and a
pint of beer is only £1.60, a ticket with camping for the week costs
€170, and, of course, there's the cost of flights. And then there's all
that guilt about your carbon footprint.
So a festival like
Sziget is much cheaper once you're in, but still a wallet-emptier.
Perhaps the biggest value is in the flexibility – day tickets and
non-camping tickets are available – of mixing the festival experience
with a holiday in Budapest. One of the distinctive elements of Sziget is
cruising to and from the island along the Danube, which is gorgeous at
night – buying a week's ticket doesn't mean you are tied to the site.
And the metropolitan setting lends yet another dimension to Sziget's
fascinating mix of festivalgoers. Justin Sullivan has been performing at
rock festivals big and small for 30 years as the leader of New Model
Army. Yet he readily admits that his three Sziget experiences stand out
among the hundreds. "It's right on the edge of a cosmopolitan, cool
city. So you get people in their camping clothes and people coming from
Budapest, all dressed to the nines. Its like Glastonbury meets the city.
The first time we played we came off quite late, but there were about
15 stages that went on all night. And you were always surprised by what
you were going to see."
One mention of Glastonbury defeats the
argument, of course. Everything the best festivals in Europe do,
Glastonbury did first. But Sziget is a 21st-century rarity: a festival
that – by way of its eclectic bill, its beautiful location and a crowd
that isn't cynical about the pleasures of sharing music and art with
others – reminds you of the original ideals of the pre-corporate
festival. So much so that it's almost convinced me to throw away three
decades of snobbishness and go to Glastonbury – before someone finally
decides it makes too many people happy and makes it go away.
