Nambassa Festival 1978-81
Jun 14
Nambassa was a series of hippie-conceived festivals held between 1976 and 1981 on large farms around Waihi and Waikino in New Zealand. They were music, arts and alternatives festivals that focused on peace, love, and an environmentally friendly lifestyle. In addition to popular entertainment, they featured workshops and displays advocating holistic health issues, alternative medicine, clean and sustainable energy, and unadulterated foods. What we consider mainstream living today was pretty radical in the 1970s. The New Zealand hippie movement was part of an international phenomena in the 1960s and 1970s, heralding a new artistic culture of music, freedom and social revolution where millions of young people across the globe were reacting against old world antecedents and embracing a new hippie ethos. Specifically New Zealand’s subculture had its foundations in the peace and anti-nuclear activism of the 1960s where hippies were actively trying to stop New Zealand’s involvement in the Vietnam war and to prevent the French from testing nuclear weapons at Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia in the Pacific Islands. The January 1979 three-day music and alternatives festival held over Auckland anniversary weekend attracted over 75,000 patrons making it the largest event of its type in New Zealand and the world (per capita). Timeline:
- 1977 January. Waikino music festival at Bicknel’s farm, Waitawheta Valley, between Waihi and Waikino. Attendance 5500.
- 1977 December. Parade from Queen St, Auckland, to nearby Albert Park for a free concert. Attendance 10,000.
- 1978 January. Nambassa three-day music, crafts and alternative lifestyles festival on Phil and Pat Hulses’ 400-acre (1.6 km2) farm in Golden Valley, north of Waihi. Attendance 25,000.
- 1978 October. Nambassa winter road show toured the North Island promoting the 1979 festival.
- 1978 December. Two-day gathering in Maritoto Valley for the Mother Centre and friends. Attendance 1500.
- 1979 January. Nambassa beach festival touring family roadshow – Whangamata, Waihi Beach, Mount Maunganui and Coromandel.
- 1979 January. Nambassa three-day music, crafts and alternative lifestyles festival on Phil and Pat Hulses’ 400-acre (1.6 km2) farm in Golden Valley, north of Waihi. Attendance 75,000 plus.
- 1981 January. Nambassa five-day celebration of music, crafts and alternative lifestyles culture on a 250-acre (1.0 km2) farm at Waitawheta Valley between Waihi and Waikino. Attendance 15,000 – well down on the 1979 festival. Reacting against the huge 1979 event which was deemed by many of the counterculture movement too large and not reflective of the alternative message, the organizers purposely ran this festival on the same weekend as a major commercial rock concert. While this event lost money, it dramatically changed its character away from rock music towards hippie and New Age culture.
In 2009 a worldwide search for the missing 2 hour 16mm film of Nambassa 79 footage was instigated. The aim was to not only recover the lost footage but to restore the original film and eventually make it available for download to the public. TVNZ aired this clip in March 2009
Nambassa related publications:
- Nambassa: A New Direction, edited by Colin Broadley and Judith Jones, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1979. It records the huge three day 1979 festival, with its 137 pages, 18 pages of full colour and 200 B&W photo images. Nambassa: Judith Jones
- Nambassa Festival Newsletter 1 edited by Peter Terry, Lorraine Ward and Bernard Woods. Published in 1976, 1977
- The Nambassa Sun and the Nambassa Waves newspapers published quarterly 1978-1981. Archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library
- The Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader published by Aotearoa Digital Arts and Clouds
- The Wong Way to Marry, by C.A. Poulter
- Trippin’ the Wright Way, by C A Poulter
- Art New Zealand Road People of Aotearoa by Andrew Martin
For more information go to: the Nambassa Website