FES.!!! FES.!!! FES.!!!! Vol.02
Three festivals we want to go to

An hour's drive from Yamagata Station, the ruins of a quarry surrounded by 50-meter-high rock walls suddenly appear. This little-known place called "Uriwari Ishiwa Park" in Takahata-cho is the site of the "Iwakabe Music Festival," which started in May 2019. The founders were a pair of then 25-year-olds who lived in Tokyo and Yamagata. They were big festival lovers who frequented festivals in Japan and abroad, and they decided "We want to hold a festival here in Iwakabe! and decided to hold the festival even though they had no experience in festival management. With the help of festival professionals and students from Tohoku University of Art & Design, the largest art university in Tohoku, the "Iwakabe Music Festival" was created.

Artists pursuing new music have performed at the 2019 and 2022 festivals held so far, including KID FRESINO, kZm, maco marets and Kotsu (CYK), The Sacred Murmurs, a unit of Utena Kobayashi and ermhoi, and many more. The U-23 ticket program, which offers half-price admission to those 23 years old and younger, is also a good point of differentiation from other large festivals that cater to a wide range of age groups.

A live stage surrounded by rock walls and a DJ floor that utilizes the rectangular cave as it is, where sound reverberates off the rocks and vibrates the ground, allowing visitors to experience the sound that can only be realized in a quarry. In addition, the CHILL AREA, which specializes in relaxation, offers shisha and Thai massage services, making it a truly unique non-music experience.

The "Iwakabe Music Festival," which is unique in every way, is said to attract many young people from Tokyo and other parts of the prefecture. Why do they want to visit this place, which is not exactly an urban area? . It is because of the location, the lineup, and the journey out to the unexplored region of Yamagata, which is a unique experience that can only be had here.

The next "Rock Wall Music Festival" will be held in 2025. And since it will be the last chance to enjoy the energy generated by rock walls and young people, there is no way you can avoid visiting the site.

Around 2019, when we started, I was feeling a certain lack of satisfaction as a 20-something that festivals were becoming more and more major and aging at the same time. I was thinking, "I want to create a festival for the younger generation and expand such a movement," when I came across the venue, "The Quarry," and impulsively set to work.

However, we were a group of amateurs who had never held a festival before, so we managed to hold the festival with the help of festival professionals. From this experience, the concept of an "open-source festival," in which we would actively disclose the knowledge we had gained, was solidified.

. I'd rather bring a kind of "club atmosphere" to the festival. . You can interact with all kinds of people, and there is a sense of unity at the venue. The sense of distance between the management and the artists is very close, and even the local grandparents are walking around and feeling the sounds.

At the entrance of the venue, a local old man handed out taro stew (Yamagata's soul food), and I was impressed by the interaction between local people and city youth. The old man was crying when he saw KID FRESINO's performance at the end of the event.

The venue is a quarry surrounded by rice paddies, so we had to build everything from the infrastructure such as the power supply. . It is fun to build everything from scratch, but it is also a lot of work. We are building a live stage at the end of the cave, but cars cannot drive through there, so we have to carry the stage materials to the end of the cave together, which tends to be a lot of manual work.

Our motivation is "If we don't have our own place, we will create one," and we hope that many other festivals, events, and challenges will increase using the "Iwakabe Music Festival" as a model. By making the information public, we have gained many friends who want to create their own festivals and want to work together with us. Without these friends, I don't think I would have been able to continue.

Interaction with the staff. The nice thing about the "Rock Wall Music Festival" is that the boundaries between guest and host are blurred. The students who help out at the festival work very few shifts and dance the rest of the time. So, I think that dancing and talking with these people is the best way to enjoy "Iwakabe Music Festival. The distance between the artists and the audience is very close, not only during the live performances, so it is like a club when everyone is talking to each other.

I would like to talk to everyone. As an open-source festival, we are trying our best to disclose as much of our internal information as possible. . Please feel free to contact me by DM, email, or whatever you want, whether on the day of the festival or on a regular basis.