Rock Music Tourism: Rock Werchter Festival and Participants’ Performances

• Main Authors: Liu, Yi-Chun, 劉怡君
• Other Authors: Lai, Chia-Ling
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4qb372

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 歐洲文化與觀光研究所 === 106 === In post-modern society, music consumption has derived its form from private listening to live houses, concerts, or music festivals, seeking for companion who share the common taste or affection. Music festivals particularly play an important role on music tourism nowadays. Based on the researcher’s music-listening experience, this research, taken Rock Werchter in Belgium as an example, aims to explore the construction and destruction of order in the festival space, the development of music festivals in response of the tourism market, and the “we-ness” of participants and the emergence of “the Others.” This research draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque and Michael Foucault’s heterotopia to examine the forming and popularization of music festival tourism. Words, images, blogs, Internet resources, interviews and data collected during the fieldwork are analyzed from the perspectives outside and inside the field. How the space and the context of Rock Werchter are constructed is the main focus here. Rock Werchter is an intriguing case in terms of a festival emphasizing on its line-up, with the lack of carnival elements, such as dances or theaters. Therefore, the mobility and the participants themselves have become the music scene. Coding the data collected from blogs and interviews through discourse analysis, the participants’ consumption and performances have transformed the group into “neo-tribe, ” where through collective expression, gazing, or listening body, participants generates fellow-feeling and creates a sense of belonging. However, the research finds that differences of races, genders, or languages still expand the awareness of “others” even within the aesthetic aura. Today, the transformation of lifestyle has led to cross-national music tourism, and music becomes the travel destination. Adding the ideology of rock music in the music scene of festivals, blended with commercialization and tourism trend, the festival and participants together shape a special spacetime. Although participants are not fully royal to the neo-tribe, the consumption and performances in Rock Werchter indeed demonstrate an alternative perspective of music tourism.