Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Poland went through a political and economic transition, which included greater openness to global culture. This had an impact on music festivals, which started to involve globally recognised artists, as well as general blueprints of organizing such events. The article has two complementary objectives. Firstly, to explore the relationship between music festivals and globalisation processes. Secondly, to exemplify how the major music festivals in Poland mirror wider social and political changes that took place in this country after the fall of the communist regime. In the first part of the article, the concept of globalisation and its historical context, as well as the democratic transformation in Poland after 1989, are discussed. In the second part, major Polish music festivals (with audiences of over 40,000), namely the Open’er Festival, the Orange Warsaw Festival, and the Pol’and’Rock Festival, are analysed to provide examples of globalisation's impact on music festivals. The process of globalisation is considered in three different aspects characterizing such events: organisation, artists, and audience.

Keywords: globalisation, mega-festivals, Open’er Festival, Orange Warsaw Festival, Pol’and’Rock Festival, post-communism

Profound social changes are characterised by the fact that their manifestations can be seen in various areas of everyday life. Therefore, various practices of everyday life may become a mirror of deeper historical processes and structural transformations. Based on this assumption, music festivals not only constitute an interesting form of participation in culture, but also indicate considerable changes taking place in society, culture, and the political sphere. Taking this into account, this article aims to achieve two goals, namely:

• 1. An exploratory goal: to explore the relationship between music festivals and globalisation and show that global processes not only transform festivals, but festivals themselves become global events.

• 2. An exemplifying goal: to indicate how the major music festivals in Poland reflect wider social and political changes that took place after the collapse of the communist regime.

In other words, I would like this article to be read as a sociologically oriented contribution to the research on Polish music festivals after 1989 and, at the same time, as a voice in festival studies on the linkage between music events and globalisation. It is not a coincidence that when describing the exploratory goal, I write about music festivals in a larger sense and in the exemplifying goal I focus on major festivals.