ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at the origins of pop festival culture in Britain, the relatively under-researched phenomenon of the jazz festivals in the New Forest during the 1950s. It explores subcultural contestation and negotiation, with particular attention to the 1960 festival, at which traditional jazz fans and modernists confronted each other during the so-called Battle of Beaulieu. The chapter describes issues relevant to the festival movement, and to Woodstock. The issues are significance of the deep green pastoral location, links with the burgeoning peace movement of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the suggestion from a London beatnik of a free festival in the forest, the question of atavism and the revival of the past. The chapter considers the problematic issue of Americanization in the imitation of the recently founded Newport Jazz Festival, as well as some of the innovations of Beaulieu.