1979 on the meadows of Cornwall
When a friend from Frankfurt gathered a group of young people around him, Tina and I were there. We put our rucksacks in the back of the trunk of my R4 and two friends in the back seat. In the front sat my high school sweetheart Tina. We drove for 15 hours through Belgium and southern England – interrupted only by the crossing on board – and set up our tents in the dark. The 1979 Greenbelt Festival was to leave a lasting impression on us. Thousands of young people from many countries with rock music, but no drug-related deaths. But instead, life witnesses from ex-junkies about the power of Jesus Christ, discussions about the social commitment of Christians and the desire to contribute to a peaceful world.
During the day, we enjoyed the sun on the grass or sat in one of the many workshops. At night, we bounced along with 17,000 others in front of the Main Stage to the rock sounds of English and US bands. A few months earlier, the New Wave group “After the Fire” had attracted a lot of attention in the English charts with their hit “Laser Love”. Randy Stonehill and Larry Norman from the USA played their way into the hearts of teenagers and tweens. The latter had set the tone with his song “Why should the devil have all the good musik”. Music – no matter what genre – is basically neutral. Christians should use rock music to make their faith heard in the generation of flower children. Larry, dressed in black leather and with long blond hair, can be described in retrospect as the father of Christian rock.
The music got into your bones and the message was convincing: God gives our lives a deeper meaning. His love is the highest power in the universe. – Around the globe, hippies swore off drugs in droves and turned to Jesus Christ. Their movement was called “Jesus People”. It led to the founding of countless church congregations and put broken families back in order.
45 years have passed. My sweetheart from back then became my wife. And after our long professional training, we founded “Diospi Suyana” with good friends. When volunteers were building the terraces for an amphitheater in November 2005, we were already thinking about Christian festivals in Curahuasi.
The music has changed – South Americans are not into rock – but the importance of festivals has remained. In three and a half months, it’s supposed to start again. We are expecting 4000 young people, almost half of whom have already registered. Our tent cities will be better organized than they were in Cornwall. Our toilet facilities do not cause disgust. And our LED spotlights on the many trusses have nothing to do with the primitive concert technology of the past. Our sound system in the amphitheater is often more reminiscent of a perfect studio sound. But the participants’ questions are the same. “Why am I on this planet?”, “Who gives my life a solid foundation and love?”.
If you click on the following picture, you are immediately there: Greenbelt 1979. And if you see a little red R4, it’s probably ours.
45 years ago, but it seems like only yesterday.
