After a hesitant beginning in the early 1970s, rock festivals hit their stride with Nambassa, Sweetwaters and a string of smaller events in the early 1980s. Following a period of decline, festivals are today as popular as ever with The Big Day Out, WOMAD and others catering to a wide range of musical taste.
The early rock music festivals held in Auckland and Ngaruawahia reflected the troubled emergence of teenagers as a distinctive group and economic force in the second half of the twentieth century.
Sweetwaters - Festival of Music, Culture and Technology. There was a lot to that new tagline. It had the future in it. A modernity echoed by the band line-up. Having come together in a mass statement of being youth culture now began to define and divide beginning a pattern still visible today.
As the new century dawned it was clear music festivals were now a viable and often long-running proposition. WOMAD, the Big Day Out and others continue to attract huge crowds each year
Newspapers and magazines were largely positive in their reporting of the 1973 Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival, although those of a tabloidbent tended to focus on the nudity rather than the festival itself.
