The prairie is the backdrop, and the wetland the stage.

The third "AND" music festival took some of the biggest names in Chinese rock music to the Guyuan Wetlands in north China's Hebei Province right next to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The first "AND" Music Festival was held in Beijing in 2011, followed by another one at the 798 Art Zone in 2012.

This year's festival has three different stages- a "Lightning" stage featuring electronic DJ's, the "Yuan" stage for rock music, and an "AND" stage for Chinese ethnic music.

The name "AND" means "brothers" in Mongolian. The festival hopes that all the ethnic music treasures can come together, like brothers, and perform on the same stage.

Musicians from the various regions in China joined forces in a rare musical extravaganza including renowned ethnic Mongolian singer Tengger.

In addition to the ethnic singers, the Guyuan Music Festival also features some of the biggest names in Chinese rock such as Cui Jian and Xie Tianxiao. Some 20 plus years after he started to compose his own music, Xie still remains a singular name in Chinese rock today. This rock star also has a talisman everywhere he performs and it goes all the way back to his Chinese roots.

He's known as the "godfather" of Chinese rock music. His 2000 album "Cold Blooded Animal," which was featured in the Rolling Stone magazine, garnered him international fame. His music is not only personal and bold, but also daringly innovative- by adding traditional Chinese instruments such as the Guzheng.

"The Guzheng is based on the pentatonic scale and it doesn't matter how you play it, it always sounds very harmonious," musician Xie said.

While, harmony may be the key to Xie's music, other's are going for dissonance.

OOC is a rising Chinese band based in Beijing first formed in 2008. Together they released their first album titled "OOC" in 2009. The band's vocalist Scott Cheng says the name OOC is an acronym for "Out of Control." But rather than "out of control," the band hopes to be "outside" of control- where equality, serenity and freedom are their mottos.

Whether it's "out of control" or "outside of control," this band however is always very much in command on stage, but always open to new possibilities.

"Actually we like more than just one kind of music. We love rock, we love funk, we love blues, metal and even punk, and jazz. I asked these guys what kind of music we want to do...we don't care about the music style. We just want to what we want to do," vocalist Cheng said.

That is also the message for Chinese rock/pop star Yang Kun. This is Yang's first time performing at a music festival. As a gift, he gave the audience a sneak preview of his new song to be released. In spite of his belated arrival at the festival, the crowd waited and watched him perform well into the morning.

While music festivals bank on the likes of Yang and Xie, the majority of the rock musicians are also very much dependent on these festivals as their sole performance venues. It's a unique symbiotic relationship in China, and one that certainly will delight the music fans.