Many people love to rock. They admire the world of rock music. In Dubai, thousands of people are rock music lovers. This is evidenced by the creation of a Rock Festival, which is joined in by many different rock bands worldwide. This festival is grandly celebrated and very well attended by people considering that this is one of its kinds in the Middle East. This is where different styles of rock and metal music are shown in a single stage in Dubai, UAE. It does not only showcase live music but extreme sports as well, which also calls the attention of the crowd. Originally, this rock festival was done in a one-day show, yet with the progress of time, it became a double-day festivity.
For those who are not so familiar with how this renowned Desert Rock Festival is shown in Dubai, a quick recount of its history is quite informative. It all started way back in 2004 when Center Stage Management (CSM) went on a task of bringing a full-blown rock fair in the Middle East. With this in mind, CSM was able to launch the first Desert Rock Concert featuring only two rock bands, The Rasmus and Juliana Down. The Middle East crowd welcomed this event with open arms, as nearly 10,000 tickets got sold for the show.
Because of the success of the first Desert Rock Concert, the organizers came up with a second concert in 2005, which turned the several hours of rock music live show into a full day rock festival. This festival, as expected, was a great success as it featured a lot of popular bands from every corner of the world and also gave space for two local rock bands, Juliana Down & Dervecell to entertain the audience. The show was witnessed by more than 6,000 viewers, which made the Dubai Desert Rock Festival internationally known as The Middle East Annual Rock Festival.
In 2006, the festival took a new applause from a huge audience when it showcased the most renowned line-up of Dubai’s local bands and world class rock bands. However, due to a variance between UAE’s moral codes and the lyrics of the song Crusader by the Saxon, the band was denied participation in the festival. Yet, despite of this, the festivities lasted for almost 10 hours, starting at 3 in the afternoon until 12:30 in the early dawn of the following day. Aside from rock music, the festival included, as added attraction, some activities to keep the fans active while being entertained. Among the activities were skatepark show, hair designs, airbrush tattoo pasting, graffiti boards, and others.
The festival continued annually since then. It became more and more popular with the line-up of known performing bands and artists becoming longer. The festivities then lasted for two days with fun and excitement rising and rising all the time. 2008 was marked as the festival’s 5th anniversary, thus, it was acclaimed as the biggest rock festival held in Dubai Festival City. This was attended by a large crowd and was looked up as the most splendid Rock Festival in the whole world.
Nothing surpasses Dubai Desert Rock Festival even to date. The festival, which was staged in 2009, was not as splendid as that of the festival in 2008. 2009 festival was focused on metal rock music. Unfortunately, no Desert Rock Festival was staged in Dubai in the present year. The organizers, CSM, announced to the expecting public the non-holding of the most awaited Desert Rock Festival, which dismayed a lot of rock music lovers.
Let us put the past behind and look forward to what these shows could possibly do to a lot of music aficionados visiting Dubai. Without any doubt, these shows emphasize what Dubai has on offer for the development of music and all those passionate rock performers.
