From ‘commercial sell out’ to community-based event: The paradoxes of Polish punk rock music festivals
This article is based on both ethnographic field research and the author’s many years of experience as a punk fan. The researcher-participant analyses the 40-year history of two Polish music festivals in order to trace the complex trajectory and changing meaning of the punk subculture in Poland. The analysis is centred on two significant events: the Jarocin Rock Festival and the Rock on the Swamp Festival. The author suggests that the countercultural past of punk, rooted in the 1980s, is now being sentimentalized and commercialized. It is treated by conservative local authorities as an insignificant monument of the past. On the other hand, punk has become an agent of important and surprising social changes. A small festival in a provincial town is inclusive for its inhabitants, integrating two very different communities. Thanks to this, the notion of ‘selling out’ is contrasted in the form of a punk-inspired, community-based event.