What's the Big Deal About South by Southwest?

Austinites love to complain about South by Southwest as hordes of outsiders crowd our favorite taco trucks and music venues. But even the grumpiest among us marvel at how far it has come since it kicked off in 1987 as a little local music get-together. These days it's grown into one of the biggest stages in the world for the creative, tech, and film industries.

Roland Swenson, Nick Barbaro, Louis Black, and Louis Meyers started the festival the year before Austin got its official moniker of Live Music Capital of the World. Fans of the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest, they put their own spin on the name and invited mostly Texas acts to perform, with the biggest names of that first festival being Kings X and The Reverend Horton Heat. They expected about 150 people but were overwhelmed by a 700-strong crowd, and it hasn't slowed down since.

In 1994 the festival added other media ventures and rebranded as the SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference. That same year Johnny Cash gave the keynote and opened for Beck in a legendary show. Since then keynote speakers have included Smokey Robinson, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, and Snoop Dogg. During the 2007 festival, SXSW Interactive spun off as the place where big tech ideas took flight, including a little social media platform called Twitter, now called X.

Plenty of stars got their big break on an Austin stage, from John Mayer in 2000 to Amy Winehouse in 2007. In 2012 the first SXSW-connected conference outside Austin launched in Las Vegas as SXSW V2V. The festival also caught the eye of Washington when President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama stopped by in 2016, with the FLOTUS giving the keynote. In 2023 it went global with the first SXSW Sydney, Australia.

For its 40th anniversary this March, SXSW is shaking things up by running the Music, Film & TV, and Innovation segments all at once over seven days. This anniversary year promises a back-to-its-roots vibe while featuring globe-spanning talent such as British culture maker DJ AG, Chilean singer-songwriter Javiera Electra, and Ukraine's eight-member punk outfit Gogol Bordello.