ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised a necessary reconfiguration of business models around live music and tourism, a reconfiguration that must accompany the technological evolution as well as the different logics of music consumption. Existing studies on music festivals have emphasised their problematic nature as spaces for articulation and experimentation with identity and lifestyles, within a framework of constant metamorphosis and uncertainty. Music and festivals allow us to think of new ways of looking at an emerging and diverse contemporary culture, in the sense that festivals can and should be understood as promoting social values and sustainability. The main argument of this chapter is to understand the most emblematic Portuguese indie rock festival—Paredes de Coura Festival—as a driver of creative tourism development in small cities and rural areas not only since its creation—in the 1990s—but also in the post-pandemic era. In sociological terms, but extending our approach to economics, sustainability, and tourism, we analyse Paredes de Coura Festival as a promoter of creative and sustainable tourism, focused on small towns or rural areas. Our objectives are: (i) to promote innovative lines of knowledge on the role played by creative and sustainable tourism in rural areas in relation to Paredes de Coura Festival before and after the pandemic; (ii) to analyse the contribution of Paredes de Coura Festival for the live music performance circuits and in the musical ecosystem before and in a post-pandemic context; (iii) to understand the role played by Paredes de Coura Festival in local/regional socio-economic development processes, namely through the promotion of a differentiated cultural and leisure offer—before and after the health crisis.
