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The Dour Festival
Date: Sat 16 Jul 2005 , 03:30 PM — 07:00 AM
Duration: 15 hrs 30 mins
The Dour festival in Belgium is, completely unexpectedly, in Dour.
With a visitor number of about 40.000 it's well-attended, though not overcrowded.
Friends had to perform there, so we decided to join in and have a free day of festivalling. We started driving at about half past 16, and arrived at about 20. We had to find our way through Dour itself though. It's relatively comfortable to see signs like "public --->" and "<--- VIP/presse" hanging around, but the signs saying "artistes" where a lot more difficult to find :-)
The artist's entrance turned out to be exactly on the side opposite side of the terrain to the public's entrance. Not that we cared, untill we found out that the artist's entrance was truly for artists. The guests had to go through the main entrance, which was a 5 km walk around both Dour and the festival. In the meantime none of us really spoke French, and French Belgians who speak something else than French are a rarity.
All in all we spent more than an hour and a half "checking in", but finally we were all inside!
Dour is straight. It's decorum is functional yet slightly sober. The good part of that is that tickets are not expensive, and the food and drink is rather reasonable as well (in festival terms of course). The unique thing about Dour, or so I've heard, is that most of the logistics and organisation and all of the booths and stands are filled and done by the local population.
This former folkfestival inevitably needs wide-spread support in the village, because the terrain is largely within the village, and the music isn't over untill about 5 o'clock in the morning, which makes for 4 pretty sleepless nights.
It is hartwearming to see that something like this is still possible, here in The Netherlands complaints and charges would rain from above. On the other hand it's also quite astounding, since names like Alec Empire, Sofa Surfers, Front 242 and Killing Joke aren't really names for which the general public will turn up in huge numbers, let alone suffer it full volume untill dawn.
O well... During the performance of Front 242 it became once again crystal clear what the differences are between your typical Belgian and Dutch audiences.
The Dutch like to go wild. They take a stampede to the pits and the frontside of the stage, only to stand there cramped like sardines in a can jumping up and down to the tunes of their favourite band.
Belgians on the other hand are far more docile. They enjoy the music in calmness. Arms crossed, sigarette, relaxxed, even if the towering speakers are storming in excess of 100db across the fields!
I have often wondered what causes this difference. Either way, we're seriously considering returning next year to experience the full 5 days.
