Welcome to the deep dive. We are so glad you're
here because you know when you think of massive
music festivals Your mind probably jumps straight
to the slow burn right the traditional ones.
Yeah, exactly like you picture the sprawling
sunbaked polo fields of Coachella or maybe the
The endless muddy campsites of Glastonbury classic
visual. Yeah, it really is and we're basically
conditioned to think of these entrenched legendary
events as institutions that took I mean, decades
to build their reputation. Oh, absolutely. They
don't just happen. Right. They usually start
out in some obscure field run by a skeleton crew
before slowly and agonizingly growing into global
destinations over the course of... 20 or 30 years.
Yeah, because the traditional model requires
a massive incubation period. I mean, it takes
years to build the physical infrastructure, the
brand trust to exactly the brand trust and just
developing the sheer logistical muscle to safely
pull off a multi -day event for, you know, tens
of thousands of people. It's not easy. But today
we are unpacking a festival that completely ignored
that playbook. Threw it right out the window.
Literally. Today we are taking a deep dive into
the Zara International Music Festival. We've
got a stack of notes and a fascinating Wikipedia
article as our source material today. It's a
really interesting read. It is. And our mission
for this deep dive is to figure out how a colossal
pop -up behemoth basically materialized overnight
on the Caspian Sea. Right out of thin air. Yeah.
We're going to look at how it pulls in 10 ,000
attendees a year, how it rapidly transformed
into one of the most prominent cultural exports
of the CIS, and why its guest list looks like
a randomly generated simulation. That guest list
is something else. But you know, what makes this
deep dive worthwhile isn't just the pop music
itself. What do you mean? Well, it is the rapid,
almost unprecedented international scaling of
this event. We are looking at a highly unusual,
eclectic mix of people brought together in a
way that frankly challenges our very definition
of what a music festival is supposed to be. Oh,
for sure. And perhaps more importantly, who it
is actually built for. OK, let's unpack this.
Because to understand where this behemoth is
today, we really have to start at the foundation.
Right. And by foundation, I mean the ancient
history of 2016. Yeah, way back then. Right.
That is when the Zara Festival was first held
in Baku, Azerbaijan. July 9th, to be exact. Which,
I mean, in the grand scheme of music history
and festival branding, is essentially yesterday.
It really is. And it wasn't some small indie
gathering just testing the waters. Not at all.
It was founded by Grigori Leps, Sergey Kazevnikov,
and Emina Galerov. And right out of the gate,
they launched an annual five -day pop music festival.
Five days. Five days, drawing 10 ,000 attendees
to the coast of the Caspian Sea. And the year
one lineup they pulled together is absolutely
staggering for a debut event. Let me check the
source here. It's a long list. Yeah, OK, we're
talking 99 Plagio, Adessa, Katyalel, Zofia Kambabayeva,
Philip Kirkorov. names. Alexander Reva, Vlad
Sokolowski, Tomas Nevergreen, and Plina Gagarin.
Like, I mean, these are major heavy hitters in
that region's pop scene. What's fascinating here
is the sheer ambition of that launch. That's
what really stands out to me. Oh, totally. Because
most festivals, even those backed by major promoters,
they start as a single day or maybe, you know,
a two day weekend if they are feeling incredibly
bold. Right. A Saturday, Sunday thing. Exactly.
But committing to five full days of programming,
securing a massive venue right by the Caspian
Sea and locking in that caliber of talent for
an unproven first year brand. That requires an
immense amount of upfront capital and supreme
confidence. I do have to push back on the sheer
logistics of this, though, because launching
a five -day festival for 10 ,000 people in its
very first year is a massive, almost reckless
gamble if you don't have the infrastructure.
Oh, it's huge risk. It is. It is literally like
trying to build a small pop -up city on the beach
overnight. Well, let's map that out for a second.
Yeah, think about what it takes. You have to
handle sanitation for 10 ,000 people. You need
heavy duty security protocols, especially for
high profile artists. You need massive staging,
complex lighting rigs, sound engineering that
can handle the acoustic nightmare of a windy
beach. Wind is brutal for live sound. Exactly.
Then there's the hospitality for the VIPs and
food and beverage for small towns worth of attendees.
And artists of the tier we just listed, they
don't usually sign on to a first year festival
unless they have absolute iron -clad faith in
the organizers. Right. So the industry pulled
those founders, Leps, Kozavdikov, and Agalarov
must have had to secure such a heavy -hitting
roster instantly. It's just wild to think about.
It is. But that industry cloud is really the
hidden mechanism here. When you look at the founders,
you aren't just looking at musicians deciding
to throw a party. What are we looking at then?
You were looking at a fusion of massive media
influence and real estate capability. They had
the ability to bypass the usual grassroots phase
because they already possessed the networking
power and the capital to conjure the necessary
infrastructure out of thin air. And establishing
this massive event in Baku is a highly strategic
geographic play. How so? Well, the source material
notes that Baku is already home to the Baku International
Jazz Festival and the International World of
Muggum Festival. Oh, right. Which means the city's
government and local infrastructure are already
well versed in hosting major international musical
events. Exactly. So they aren't starting from
zero when it comes to permitting or crowd control
or hotel capacity. Precisely. And for you listening
who might not be familiar with Mogum, it is a
deeply complex traditional style of Azerbaijani
folk music. It has ancient roots, highly intricate
acoustic compositions, and it carries immense
cultural prestige. I see where this is going.
Right. So by placing Zara in that specific city,
the founders are taking a location already globally
respected for jazz and complex traditional Mogum,
and they're loudly adding mainstream, high budget,
pyrotechnic pop to its resume. That's fascinating.
It essentially centralizes the CIS pop music
industry in Azerbaijan for that week. OK, let's
actually define that term for the listener, because
it's going to come up a lot. When we say CIS,
we are talking about the Commonwealth of Independent
States. Right. Essentially a coalition of post
-Soviet states. Yeah. And from an entertainment
perspective, the CIS represents a massive, unified
cultural market. Huge market. Even though there
are different countries and borders involved,
there is a heavily shared linguistic and media
backdrop. Like, a pop star who is massive in
Russia is likely also pulling huge numbers in
Belarus, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan. It's a very
interconnected ecosystem. Which is why centralizing
that ecosystem in Baku for five days is such
a power move. Oh, absolutely. Okay, so they pull
off this miraculous pop -up city in 2016. They
prove the concept the infrastructure holds and
the artists show up. But here's where it gets
really interesting. because the festival doesn't
just coast on its initial success. No, it ramps
up. Big time. The attendee list evolves in 2017
and 2018 into something totally unexpected. The
gravity of the event increases exponentially,
I'd say. It really does. In 2017, the second
festival hits on July 27th, and they just double
down on the talent. they pull even more massive
CIS stars. More big names. Yeah, the Sourcelists,
Valerio, Loboda, Sergey Lazarev, the band Grodusi,
and Timur Rodriguez joining the fray. So it's
cementing its status as the absolute place to
be for regional pop royalty. Right. But then
we hit 2018, the third festival, and the guest
list takes a hard left turn into the surreal.
Yeah, the 2018 iteration is where Zara basically
transforms from a music festival into a geopolitical
and cultural phenomenon. Just listen to this
lineup. In 2018, special guest Steven Seagal
attends. The 90s Hollywood action star. The very
same. Wow. And he doesn't just attend to, like,
wave from a VIP balcony. He actually gets on
stage and sings a duet with one of the festival
founders, Emina Galerov. Just consider the implications
of that visual for a moment. I mean, I cannot
even begin to imagine the acoustics on that,
let alone the sheer absurdity of the image. A
90s martial arts action hero belting out a duet
on the Caspian Sea with a prominent CIS pop star.
It's definitely a choice. But wait, it gets stranger.
You have Siegel singing. You have other special
guests like Baskov. You have singers from the
Black Star, Inc. label which just for context
for you listening is a massive highly influential
mainstream hip hop and urban pop label in that
region. Bringing them in shifts the demographic
entirely. Totally. It pulls in massive youth
culture and lifestyle branding. And then crucially
the source notes that Dmitry Peskov was one of
the festival's main guests. Right. The press
secretary of the Russian Federation's president.
Yes. Now just to be completely clear for you
listening we're just reporting the facts on the
Wikipedia source here. We aren't endorsing or
taking any political stance on his presence at
all. We're just looking at the data point as
it's written. the source exactly we are remaining
strictly impartial here right but looking at
this purely as a logistical and cultural data
point his presence completely rewrites the DNA
of what this event is. It adds an incredibly
dense layer of political gravity to the room.
Because it is so bizarre. I mean, map out that
room in your head. You've got massive youth culture
hip hop idols, a 90s Hollywood action star fresh
off a duet, billionaire developers and a high
ranking national press secretary all rubbing
shoulders. Almost quite the mix. If you tried
to write a movie script with that party scene,
A producer would tell you it's too unrealistic.
They throw it out. Yeah. It sounds like a randomly
generated guest list from a game of Mad Libs.
It is this wild, surreal contrast of completely
disparate worlds colliding in one VIP tent on
a beach. It is a fascinating collision of spheres.
I'll give you that. But if we analyze the mechanics
of that collision, it tells us exactly what Zara
had achieved by his third year. Which is? The
music, while prominent, is no longer the sole
driving force. The festival has basically morphed
into a high -level networking nexus for the region's
elite. Okay, so you're saying it's less about
the fans and the crowd, more about creating a
closed -door velvet -rope environment for the
people backstage. Well... Think about the different
types of power represented in that 2018 list.
You have cultural power with the pop stars and
the massive lifestyle influence of the Black
Star Ink artists. Right. You have international
celebrity cachet, however unconventional, with
Steven Seagal. Very unconventional. Yeah. You
have the immense economic power of the Festool
founders and you have high level political influence
represented by someone like Peskov. Right, right.
When a single event can attract all those disparate
pillars of influence to the same geographic location
for five days, it transcends entertainment. That
makes a lot of sense. The music essentially becomes
the background score for high level socializing,
deal making, and relationship building among
the CIS elite. So the stage is almost an excuse
for the VIP tent to exist. Exactly. It provides
a safe, exclusive, highly curated environment
where cultural, economic, and political figures
can interact informally away from boardrooms,
or press podiums. That's a great point. That
informal access is a remarkably powerful draw.
It explains why the festival became so prominent
so quickly. It filled a vacuum, providing a centralized
meeting ground that previously might not have
existed in quite this specific glamorous format.
That completely reframes how we look at the success
of this event. It's not just about selling tickets
to 10 ,000 people. It's about who occupies the
top 1 % of that footprint. Precisely. So what
does this all mean for the future of the festival?
Because a party this big with that much concentrated
influence apparently couldn't stay contained
to just one country. No, it could not. And this
brings us to the franchise expansion. This is
the pivot where Zara completely breaks the traditional
music industry mold. Because usually a music
festival is inherently tied to its geography.
Always. The dirt. the weather, the local town,
that is part of the brand's DNA. You can't just
pack Coachella into a suitcase and move it to
Germany. Right, you can't. You don't take Glastonbury
out of the English mud and drop it in the desert.
The location is the pilgrimage. Yeah, people
go for the place as much as the music. But Zara,
the source material tells us that just three
years after its creation, so we're talking 2019,
the festival expanded to Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates. Which is a logistical leap of
staggering proportions. It is mind -boggling.
And it didn't stop there. The Wikipedia article
lists its locations as expanding to include not
just Azerbaijan and Dubai, but also Düsseldorf
in Germany, Monaco, Sochi in Russia, and Bodrum
in Turkey. Zara operates more like a massive
touring pop -up franchise than a traditional
site -specific music festival. If you're listening
to this and trying to imagine unbolting a five
-day festival, the stages, the VIP tents, the
security apparatus, the artists, and just shipping
it to Monaco, it almost defies logic. It defies
traditional festival logic, yes. But if we connect
this to the bigger picture, the underlying business
model we just discussed. The VIP networking nexus.
Right, exactly. If we look at that, this expansion
strategy is incredibly shrewd. How do you mean?
It tells us exactly who their target demographic
is. And they aren't just randomly throwing darts
at a map. Look at the specific cities they chose.
Dubai, Monaco, Bodrum, Dusseldorf, Sochi. Well,
Dusseldorf is a massive international business
and trade hub. Right. Monaco is the epitome of
old world European luxury. Dubai is the pinnacle
of new world luxury. And Bodrum is effectively
the ultimate summer playground for regional wealth.
Which means they are aggressively chasing international
wealth hubs. These are premier global luxury
destinations, particularly favored by the affluent
CIS demographic we were just talking about. Ah,
I see the thread here. So they aren't trying
to build a new local audience from scratch in
Germany or the UAE. No. Like, they aren't trying
to convince German locals to suddenly get into
CIS pop music. Not primarily, no. What this expansion
represents is a highly targeted cultural export.
Interesting. The organizers recognize that their
core audience, the elite VIP network, the affluent
fans of CIS pop culture, they're highly mobile.
They travel constantly. Exactly. They have vacation
in Monaco. They do high level international trade
in Dubai. They spend their summers on yachts
in Bodrum. Right. So instead of demanding that
this ultra wealthy audience carve out time to
always come back to Baku every single year, Zara
simply packs up the pop -up city and takes the
festival directly to them. It's a completely
inverted model. It really is. It's almost more
akin to Formula One racing than a traditional
music festival. Oh, that is a perfect analogy.
Right. Formula One is is a high -end traveling
circus of culture, engineering, and immense influence
that just sets up shop in the most expensive,
glamorous cities in the world. Spot on. They
build a temporary city, throw a massive, highly
exclusive party around the main event, and then
pack up the entire circus and move to the next
wealth hub. Zara's doing the exact same thing,
just swapping out race cars for pop stars. And
by adopting that Formula One model, it elevates
the perceived value of the music itself. How
so? Well, think about it. If you are showcasing
pop stars in Monaco or against the skyline of
Dubai, you are framing that culture on a global
luxurious stage. It projects a specific image
of success, wealth, and soft power far beyond
the borders of Azerbaijan or the CIS. It essentially
says, our culture belongs in the most expensive
ZIP codes on earth. That is wild. Okay, let's
take a breath and recap this incredible journey
because it is quite a ride. It really is. We've
gone from a Ambitious five -day pop -up city
on the Cascian coast in 2016 pulling 10 ,000
people right out of the gate. Thanks to massive
industry backing. Yeah We've watched it evolve
into a surreal Mad Libs style VIP networking
nexus, where hip hop artists, 90s Hollywood action
heroes and high ranking political figures all
share the same rarefied air. Such a crazy visual.
It is. And finally, we've seen it break its geographical
borders entirely, transforming into a massive
internationally touring cultural franchise that
chases its wealthy demographic to places like
Dubai, Monaco and Bodrum. It is a masterclass
in aggressive scaling, understanding your true
demographic. and completely redefining brand
positioning in live entertainment. It really
is. And I think for you, the listener, understanding
these massive international events is so vital.
Absolutely. It helps us realize just how much
vibrant, highly organized, and deeply influential
pop culture exists entirely outside of our standard
everyday media bubbles. We can get so tunnel
visioned. Exactly. We tend to think the center
of the entertainment universe is always where
we happen to be sitting. But the story of Zara,
proves that there are entirely different parallel
universes of massive cultural gravity out there
operating on a completely different set of rules.
Which brings up a fascinating contrast and something
I think is worth dwelling on even after we wrap
up today. This raises an important question.
If the new pinnacle of live music becomes this
Formula One model where high -end festivals completely
untethered from geography, acting as massive
touring franchises that just chase global wealth
from Dubai to Monaco, what happens to local grassroots
music scenes? Oh, wow. Yeah. If the biggest cultural
events are designed to literally tack up and
leave for wealthier international shores, do
local communities get priced out of their own
cultural exports? That's a tough question. Or,
on the flip side, does the departure of these
massive behemoths actually create a healthy vacuum,
leaving room for new hyper -local community -first
festivals to emerge back home? That is a brilliant
thought experiment. Does the traveling circus
drain the local ecosystem, or does it clear the
canopy so new things can grow? Exactly. It completely
changes how we look at the footprint a festival
leaves behind, unmoored and on the move. Something
for you to think about next time you see a massive
festival lineup drop. Until next time, keep diving
deep.