This account follows the festival from its first Sunday afternoon in 1986 to a large community event. It is a summary of the history as recorded by the festival and archived online, with the original claims attributed to the organisers.

The first Sunday

Groovefest began in the autumn of 1986 as a Sunday afternoon gathering in a park in Norman, Oklahoma. A crowd of about 250 people came to what was then called “Sunday in the Park”, organised by Eric Newendorp, Jenn Flygar and Todd Walker. The name came from Flygar, who was asked to think up something “groovy”. From the start the event celebrated individual creativity and music.

A link with Amnesty International

Late in 1986, two University of Oklahoma students, Allen Hailey and Tom Decker, called a number shown during television coverage of a human rights concert tour. A few weeks later they heard from a regional director of Amnesty International USA, who offered to come to Norman to meet anyone interested in forming a campus group. That meeting led to the OU Amnesty group, and the group and the festival began working side by side.

In 1988 the group asked Newendorp to stage a benefit for Amnesty, and he offered Groovefest as the platform. According to the archive, the festival won a local readers’ award for best music festival in its first year with Amnesty, and again in 1994.

Moving to bigger venues

From 1986 to 1992, the festival was held in the amphitheatre at Andrews Park, a public works project built before the Second World War. The organisers pointed to the way such projects encouraged people to take part in building their own communities. By spring 1992 around 2,500 people attended, which stretched the venue. In the spring of 1993 the festival moved to the University of Oklahoma duck pond, a central, student-friendly site, and the first show there reportedly drew over 3,000 people.

The 1990s high points

• In 1994 the campus Amnesty group hosted Jack Healey, a long-time leader of Amnesty International USA, who had been the creative force behind large human rights concert tours in the 1980s. He returned in 1995. The organisers said the 1994 weekend, held on Campus Corner with two stages, drew about 20,000 people.
• In March 1996 the university president issued a proclamation naming 8 to 14 April a week of human rights celebration and awareness, urging the university to see diversity as strength and to hold open, respectful debate.
• The tenth anniversary festival took place on 14 April 1996. A compilation CD of 17 local artists focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a headline musician and two guest activists took part. An evening event at a coffee house in Oklahoma City supported local Amnesty groups.

What the organisers say it stands for

The central message was summed up as “human rights are for everyone”. The organisers described a festival where local artists play, monks chant, young people dance in the rain and activists speak on issues at home and abroad. They noted that there is never an entrance fee, and stated that it was the longest-running and largest regular event by any Amnesty International student group in the world, a claim we cannot independently verify.

The text quotes a 1991 magazine dedication to Amnesty that described music as something that frees the human spirit, and ends with words from Archbishop Oscar Romero about speaking for those without a voice.

Schedule changes

The festival used to take place twice a year, in spring and autumn. Eventually it settled on the first Sunday in October because spring in Norman is crowded with other events such as the music festival, a medieval fair, a May fair, Earth Day and graduation. Over the decades it has moved between Andrews Park, Campus Corner and the duck pond, then back to Andrews Park, and many directors have come and gone.

Continue with the stage lineups, the 2010 edition or what Groovefest is.

More on the tenth anniversary, 1996

The anniversary festival on 14 April 1996 followed the proclamation week. The compilation CD, which gathered tracks from 17 local artists, was released to promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the message that rights belong to every person. A recording artist from outside the region came to Oklahoma for the weekend, and six local groups played through the afternoon: Limbo Cafe, The Reverb Brothers, New Tribe, Legghead, The Street People and Fanny Grace.

Two guest speakers addressed the crowd. One was a student from Myanmar, then in exile and active in a campaign for her country, and the other a student activist from Guatemala who spoke about efforts to have human dignity respected. Two days earlier, on 12 April, a related evening event took place at a coffee house and gallery in Oklahoma City, with the proceeds from T-shirts, CDs and information materials going to local Amnesty groups.

Why this history matters

The record shows how a small student-led idea can scale up when a community keeps adopting it. Each venue move was a response to growth, and each decade added new partners and causes. That is why the story is still told on the festival’s own pages.

The organisers also stress that none of this would have happened without the dancers, listeners, petition signers, letter writers and poster hangers who turned up year after year, whose effort they credit above that of any single leader.