Hestival 2016 combines horse racing and electronic music, to bring you one of the most unique experiences in your festival calendar this year. The brainchild of Christian Blomberg, Hestival launches in 2016 as something of a childhood passion for the Norwegian equine- and music enthusiast. “When I was younger, my father took me to the horse races in Oslo”, he tells me in an email about what started it all. “I was fascinated by the speed of these massive animals, but nothing about the rest of the setting appealed to me. It felt pretty posh and I wasn’t old enough to gamble nor drink. I forgot about horse racing for a while until I re-discovered it when I moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2009. The Melbourne Cup is the ‘race that stops a nation’: also called spring carnival; it brings together people of all ages for a month of celebrations, horse races and day partying. My friends and I sought out those events and it was a blast. A day long party, filled with gambling, booze and – of course – horses. I remember thinking that it was strange that we didn’t have anything like this in Scandinavia. While there are party days at the race tracks in Oslo, only families and old people would go to those. Going to the races’ feels like something distant and posh (think about Ascott in the UK) and people in their 20s and 30s would not attend.”
Enter Blomberg, with his experience of Melbourne and his youth at the races. “Thinking back to those awesome days at the Melbourne Cup, I remembered two things that I did not like: the food was awful and there was no music. Fixing those two things would make it the perfect day.” And today we have Hestival as a result, featuring an event featuring gambling, racing, booze, and for the first time ever music. Blomberg didn’t cut any corners on either front, and has drafted some of Oslo’s most revered musical talents for the event including Olefunken and local legend Lindstrøm. Jæger will be hosting the official after party on Saturday, the 18th to conclude the event with Det Gode Selskab’s Solaris and Tod Louie taking care of our musical programming for the event. This one is not to be missed.
* Go to www.hestival.com for more details and to get your tickets. Tickets are selling out fast.