Hidden in Music

Can pop festivals offer young people opportunities to experience transcendental ideas, resulting in religiosity? The research proposed in this article joins current debates about pop music as a substitute for institutional forms of religion which are supposed to be vanishing. This article offers a critical reflection on some well-established approaches like large-scale quantitative studies and those focusing on cultural change. It contains a plea for qualitative research: so-called multi-sited fieldwork, stressing participant observation. The article is of a programmatic, reflective character. The research starts from the perspective of young people, following the Malinowskian dictum: to discover their vision of their world.