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Woodstock festival gets museum
30/05/2008 16:01 - (SA)
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| A Hippies "Magic Bus" replica forms part of "The Story of the Sixties and Woodstock" at the Museum at Bethel Woods Centre for the Art. (AFP) |
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New York - The spasm of sex, drugs, rock music and politics that was the historic 1969 Woodstock festival has spawned a museum in tribute to the birthplace of US counterculture.
A half-million "hippies" turned out in the small farming village of Woodstock, north of New York City, to enjoy music performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Now comes the Museum at Bethel Woods, located not in Woodstock but Bethel Woods, a country drive from the former farm swarmed 40 years ago by thousands of fans - some naked, some drugged - sharing free music and free love.
The multimedia museum, on a 240-hectare farm, is a brainchild of Alan Gerry, who made his fortune in the local cable television business.
Gerry bought and developed the property into a $100m arts and performance centre with some 1 000 square meters of exhibits, including photos of concert-goers swimming naked or praying for rain to stop.
The concert came together once legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix agreed to perform.
"Once Jimi Hendrix said yes, we had the floodgates open," organisers say in a video museum-goers see at the new blast-from-the-past facility.
A documentary is screened on turbulent events of the times, including assassinations of political icons John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King jnr, which puts the concert in historical context.
Pacifism
The Woodstock concert also made a stand for pacifism, with even the unarmed guards wearing tags reading "peace," instead of "security".
The film's historical backdrop also includes the Cuban missile crisis and civil rights struggles, underscoring parallels between the arts and the broader society during the tumultuous 1960s.
The Vietnam War in particular is represented in music, as with the song by Country Joe and The Fish: "One, two, three, four: what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn: next stop is Vietnam."
Organisers said the impact of those times can still be seen and felt across the United States today.
"If we have today a woman and an African-American running for president, that's the legacy," folk legend Richie Havens told reporters.
Havens, a singer and guitarist known for his soulful covers of modern pop and folk classics, opened the Woodstock Festival when other stars were stuck in a massive traffic jam on a local highway.
The artists eventually were airlifted in via helicopter but not until after Havens had held his own on stage for what felt like an eternity.
'Freedom'
"They told me 'Richie, Can you do four more?' I said OK. And four more? And four more? Then I realised I had no more," Havens recalled.
His improvised version of Motherless Child, to which he added a verse with the word "freedom" repeated over and over eventually became an international hit.
"I started, the word 'freedom' went out of my mouth," Havens recounted, referring to his landmark performance which received continuous ovations as he played encore after encore until he ran out of songs.
"It came together that way," said Havens, who opened the most recent Cannes Festival.
Drugs, also part of the fabric of the Woodstock event, is also covered in the museum homage.
"We wanted to sell 'anti-acid' pills because of the famous announcement on stage 'be careful about the brown acid, it's not particularly good,' but we didn't," smiled museum director Wade Lawrence.
Duke Devlin, 65, a dairy farmer who shows tourists the local sights, said the relevance of Woodstock remains undiminished.
"The suit guys, they call it museum," he said. "I call it the time machine."
- AFP
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