Groningen, city of music

In a guest lecture by dr. Louis-Manuel Garcia , dr. Garcia described the vivid music scene of Berlin, mostly the Techno-part of the music scene, and he described many tourists coming to Berlin only for the techno-scene.

In the article related to this observation, Garcia describes the typical techno-tourist, that comes to Berlin to take part in techno-related events. The article states that the techno-scene in Berlin is famous all around the world, and thus brings a lot of extra tourists to Berlin, which has a huge impact in the tourism business in the city.

So, the music scene in Berlin draws a lot of extra tourists. What about Groningen?

Well, as said before, a city gets a lot of extra tourists if the music scene in the city is famous or

Eurosonic

notorious. In my opinion, the music scene in Groningen has been developing over the years and has now become a pretty popular place for music. The biggest example for this is the Eurosonic/Noorderslag festival, a large annual showcase festival, where famous and not yet famous bands from all over the world come to perform. In the weeks around this festival, the city is buzzing with tourists, as I've noticed last January. This festival has a very good reputation among artists and music fanatics, and brings a lot of tourism to Groningen.

As a direct consequence of this growing reputation, the several musical venues in Groningen are offering bigger names to the people each year. In the last years, famous bands like Megadeth, the Robert Cray Band, Limp Bizkit and Kasabian, performed in the Oosterpoort, one of the two large stages in Groningen. Also Vera, another, smaller stage, offers some nice acts each year, which I like very much. All of this brings even more tourists to Groningen.

Vera Groningen (source: jonggoud050.nl)

source:

Garcia, L.M. (2015). Techno-tourism and post-industrial neo-romanticism in Berlin’s electronic dance music scenes, DOI: 10.1177/1468797615618037