‘Gonna Live Forever’: Noel Gallagher’s Spaces of Wellbeing

This chapter explores the tacit constructions of utopia linking place, music and wellbeing at the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) festival held in the North Island region of Taranaki, New Zealand. It builds on-recent calls to see music and dance as a means through which the author's examine how people experience and make sense of the world. The chapter argues that music festivals paradoxically both regulate and liberate space, time and behaviour. It explores the promotion of in-place experience of wellbeing at this festival which annually draws up to 30,000. This exploration begins by-situating the music festival phenomenon more generally, before considering the particular characteristics of WOMAD New Zealand. The chapter focuses on its soundscapes and the sense of WOMAD being a utopian world apart. WOMAD primarily draws people for its musical performances, a large proportion of who travel from outside the host region. A particular characteristic of WOMAD is its socio-cultural permeability.