Woodstock was a concert held in Bethel, New York in 1969. People who advertised for this music festival expected only around 200,000 people to show up for the entirety of the festival; however, "nearly half a million people converged on the concert site" (History.com). What had really made Woodstock so popular was the emergence of the counterculture. After the "baby boomers" (babies born after WWII) were kicked out of their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement due to the emergence of "black nationalism", these late teens and early college kids decided to change the world by protesting the Vietnam War and America's involvement with other countries. The perfect place for the hippies to express their relativistic ideas and have peace with each other presented itself at Woodstock (Levy, 278).

     Emerging alone with the counterculture was rock n' roll. Rock's "driving rhythms, its undisguised sensuality, and its often harsh and angry tone" all made it the perfect machine for expressing the hippies' opinions about the political and social protests in the 1960s (Brinkley, 792). With the massive crowd of nearly 400,000 people, advertisers who ran Woodstock realized that they would not be able to tell who was coming in and out of the ground so they opened the festival up to everyone for free (History.com). Because the amount of people was so unexpected, helicopters were used to fly in provisions such as food, medical supplies, and even many of the musicians themselves (History.com). The whole festival lasted three days long, and during that time many musicians paved their way to fame (Brinkley, 792). Performers included Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe McDonald, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and many more (Levy, 279). 

     Although there were many types of people who attended the festival, because hippies were the most prominent, they influenced the style of the music (History.com). During performances, many hippies were naked or halfway there, and/or were experimenting with drugs like cocaine, pot, and LSDs. Many attendees later recollected that they really couldn't recollect anything at all, except that everyone was feeding off of each other's energy, allowing simply for peace, music, and people. One attendee thought of Woodstock as a time of "social changes in human freedom and expression....we learned not to be ashamed of our bodies in the nude, we smoked grass to feed our horizons with the music, we spent time with our kids and pets...it showed to the world that all was not just violence and hatred...it is LIFE!" (Levy, 279). The energy everyone was feeling was cultivated by the anti-war style of music the performers played, in agreement with the hippie protests against the Vietnam War (Brinkley, 792). Many songs were anti-war, including "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendri and "Soul Sacrifice" by Santana.