Monterey Pop Festival

MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL
 
 
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival  was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California.  Crowd estimates for the festival have ranged from 25,000 to 90,000 people, who congregated in and around the festival grounds.  The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who and Ravi Shankar; the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin; and the introduction of Otis Redding.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

I have not meant to suggest in these various Women-in-Rock posts that women have just been doing what men do when they do rock and roll.  Sometimes women are the ones blazing a trail.  When Cheap Thrills, the breakthrough album for Big Brother and the Holding Company came out in August 1968Janis Joplin had already wowed the crowd at the legendary 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.  

 

(February 2014)

 

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Ravi Shankar is the Indian musician best known to American audiences; this master of the sitar performed often at rock festivals like Monterey Pop and Woodstock.  Following Woodstock though, he distanced himself from the hippie subculture, as Wikipedia put it (what I heard was that, basically, he thought everyone was too stoned to truly appreciate his music).  Shankar has a musician daughter, Norah Jones
 

(September 2014)

 

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Ravi Shankar is an acknowledged master of the sitar and began promoting Indian classical music in 1956, including appearances at major music gatherings like the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (Shankar’s first performance at a rock event) and the original Woodstock in 1969.   

 

(July 2015)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021