The festival was held two weeks ago, 13-15 July. It's called Ilosaarirock. Pretty much all the rock festivals in Finland are called something-rock. Ilo means joy, saari means island. Ilosaari is a little island in Joensuu city centre, and when this festival started in the 70s it was held on that island. As the festival grew the island wasn't big enough, so now the location is a bit further away from the centre of town. But all the 20 000+ participants fit well in this new area! Well it's not even that new, it's been in use for the festival since 1991.
Me, not listening to some band, wearing ear defenders. I don't like ear plugs because they won't go into my ears... This way is much easier.
Ilosaarirock is one of the biggest rock festivals in Finland. It brings a lot of people into our small Joensuu for one weekend a year! Other big ones include Ruisrock (ruis = rye) and Provinssirock (provinssi = province), and they usually have some bigger foreign names such as The Cardigans, Snoop Dogg and Snow Patrol this year, whereas Ilosaarirock usually focuses more on Finnish and local talent :P But The Darkness played at Ilosaarirock one year (and I wasn't there :( )!
So, although it's called a rock festival, it's not all rock. There's a whole stage dedicated to reggae, hiphop and R&B and there are always artists there that play electronic music. Of course in Finland heavy metal is big as well.
Bungee jumping. Naturally an important part of a music festival.
You can see what's happening here on the video at the end.
Bees kept trying to get close to me all weekend!
Last band at night.
Ok, time for the video! You can see my filming skills are outstanding. It's just clips from the festival area and soundbites from a few artists' shows! I have the bands names written as they play, if they're from abroad I have the country in brackets. If there are no brackets, they're Finnish. Enjoy!
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