Media Frenzy Over Drug Use at Kenting Music Events

Source: Kenting Exclusive: Thousand-Person Drug and Sex Party
From: Next magazine
Date: 2002/4/11

Spring Scream (春天吶喊) is held every April in Kenting by two Americans resident in Taiwan, Jimi and Wade, who began the festival in 1995 as a showcase for independent bands. It grew from a small, casual gathering to a celebration featuring over a hundred bands, and is regarded as the origin of Taiwan’s music festival scene.

From 2002, when parties such as “Moonlight” (organised by Red Baby Studio) and “Dream Field” (organised by Dream Field Productions) began attracting the electronic dance music crowd to the foot of Kenting’s Dajian Mountain, a proliferation of music festivals and electronic parties modelled on Spring Scream flooded into Kenting. This also drew media coverage in a sensationalist vein, exemplified by Next magazine’s inflammatory headline “Thousand-Person Drug and Sex Party” and its accompanying images and text, which sparked public debate. Paradoxically, the media’s negative sensationalism brought even larger crowds to Kenting’s music festivals in subsequent years.

 

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External Links

• Spring Scream at 13 — “The Band People Are Still Here, the Stigma Won’t Wash Off” (United Daily News)
• Spring Scream Moves Out — The Real Kenting Spring Scream Is Back! (StreetVoice Blow)
• Chang Tieh-chih: Media Demonises Woodstock — Progress Still Needed (Chang Tieh-chih)
• Spring Scream Doesn’t Do Drugs — But Media Coverage Leaves You Shaking Your Head (New Taiwan Weekly)

Shaking or Screaming? Analysis of Media Coverage and Audience Interpretation of Spring Scream (Hsieh Pei-ying, MA thesis)