New Zealand Will Host a 100,000+ Person Festival This March with No Covid Restrictions!
While concerts of any kind are but a distant memory in much of the world as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, New Zealand, which took drastic measures early on to lock down and eradicate the virus from its borders, will play host to a massive festival this March featuring 470 performances and over 1,700 artists of all kinds.
No restrictions. No masks. No social distancing. A full-fledged festival! You should be jealous, because it easily could’ve been us if our country wasn’t full of “freedom”-obsessed losers.
CubaDupa, held annually in March throughout the Cuba Precinct in Wellington, bills itself as New Zealand’s most creative, most diverse and largest free street festival, attracting over 100,000 people across the weekend of March 27 and 28. The 2020 edition was canceled at the dawn of the pandemic, but 2021 brings the festival back in full force.
Festival Director Gerry Paul says:
“After a tough year, Cuba Dupa 2021 will be just the tonic we all need. The streets will be alive with surprises around every corner and our most ambitious, most creative and most diverse programme ever. We will be there celebrating our community, our artists and the businesses that give Cuba Street and Wellington its unique character.”
CubaDupa is free to attend and features a mixture of music, dance, parades, technology, culinary traditions, and neighbourhood revelry. “Enjoy musical genres from opera to post-apocalyptic punk rock, from New Orleans brass to Balkan beats,” press copy teases.
And yes, that includes metal.
Ben Mulchin, who runs Valhalla, the renowned metal bar in Wellington, announced the lineup for the bar’s stage today, covering a wide variety of styles from thrash to dungeon synth. He explains:
“Valhalla is a place anyone can be themselves. It’s our oasis for metal culture, where all Vikings, metal heads, and misfitted toys in New Zealand can call home. We can’t wait to show CubaDupa festival and the world the heaviest grooves, most savage riffs and sickest blast beats Wellington has to offer. It means everything to us that we can do what we love and live for. Hopefully the world can go back to doing the things it loves cos metal never dies in New Zealand.”
Valhalla’s lineup features some of the best metal bands from all over New Zealand, including:
Battle For Endor
This Silent Divide
Marrowspawn
Voodoo Bloo
Sheeps
Into Orbit
Planet Hunter
Spook the Horses
Dimestore Skanks
MeatPlanet Of The Dead
Jörmungandr
Fall of Man
Radar Angel
Bzzrkr
Mammuthus
Severed Beliefs
Coerced
Altar of Achlys
Slave Cadavar
Gugonix
More info on CubaDupa is available here.
