"Unsafe things like youth and jazz”: Beaulieu Jazz Festivals (1956-61), and the origins of pop festival culture in Britain

This chapter looks at the origins of pop festival culturein Britain, the relatively under-researched phenomenon of the early jazz festivals in the NewForest during the 1950s. It explores subcultural contestation and negotiation, with particular
attention to the 1960 festival, at which traditional (‘trad’) jazz fans and modernists confrontedeach other during the (mediated) so-called Battle of Beaulieu. It introduces issues relevant tothe later festival movement, and to Woodstock: the significance of the deep green pastorallocation, links (strong or weak) with the burgeoning peace movement of the Campaign forNuclear Disarmament, the suggestion from a London beatnik of a free festival in the forest,the question of atavism and the revival of the past. It considers the problematic issue ofAmericanisation in the imitation of the recently founded Newport Jazz Festival as well assome of the innovations of Beaulieu.