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Are some types of arts festivals more conducive to particular emotional experiences and social imaginaries than others? In particular: where does cosmopolitanism–broadly defined as an ensemble of dispositions characterised by openness to the diversity of the world and to ‘otherness’–find itself? Music festivals are often spaces where a cosmopolitan gaze, feeling, and attitude develop. This capacity of music festivals to foster, and arguably cultivate, a cosmopolitan disposition can be resumed in at least three elements: music as a universal form of art, as intensely participatory, and as a cultural broker translating the culturally specific into a shared experience. We discuss each of these elements with reference to the three music festivals studied: Umbria Jazz, Sonar, and WOMAD. These three elements are of course interlinked, and each festival incorporates and exalts all of them to varying degrees.

The first of the three elements through which music festivals develop their cosmopolitan attitude is that music is probably the most universal form of art,‘the most ‘spiritual ‘of the arts of the spirit (…) the ‘pure’art par excellence’(Bourdieu 1984: 19). In this sense, music represents an art-form which is intrinsically more cosmopolitan than the written word, the narratives and dialogues of cinema, or the ‘spoilt-for-choice’cornucopia of urban and local mixed-arts events. Regardless of the originating culture, music and rhythm comprise a potentially universal language that bypasses particular cultural boundaries and linguistic borders, even when full local meanings and nuances may evade cosmopolitan ears.