Festivals and meets: the place of music in "summer Sweden

In the last few decades, special music events have become a prominent part of the cultural calender in Sweden during the summer months. In this article, an inventory of music festivals, as well as of the meets of folk musicians, during the summer of 1993, forms the basis for a discussion of the types, sites, timing and spatial distribution of different categories of such events. An expected relationship between special music events and tourism is supported by the data. There is less support for the hypothesis that the spatial distribution of such events might reflect different regional musical cultures, except in the case of folk music events. Many summer music events take place in quite small communities, and they have often been established partly on the expectation that they can be of significance as magnets for tourists, as generators of local revenues from tourism, and as place image makers. Some of these issues are discussed towards the end of the article, on the basis of data from some recent studies of the catchment areas, visitor profiles and socio-economic impact of specific music festivals. -Author