The East Coast Blues Festival began in 1990 at the Arts Factory in Byron Bay, New South Wales. It quickly became known as "Byron Bay Bluesfest" and "The Byron Bay Festival" and is now known as "Bluesfest". At a time when the Maleny Folk Festival (later to be known as the Woodford folk Festival) was only just beginning and festivals such as Big Day Out and Womadelaide did not exist, the Bluesfest pioneered the presentation of blues music in Australia.

Bluesfest defines a new way of describing the wide group of music that was blues music, world music, roots music, a hybrid of those and other cultural styles under one umbrella - Blues & Roots Music. This catapulted Blues & Roots Music - a non-pop music style into the mainstream, whereby the Aria awards within 12 months created the Blues & Roots category as one of their major awards. This is unique to Australia as in the Grammy awards (USA) and the Brit awards (UK) do not have a Blues & Roots award category. Bluesfest has continued to evolve in the new decade, incorporating surf culture, Latino Music, African Music, political and environmental message artists.

Bluesfest is one of the most highly awarded festivals in Australia. In 2005 and 2006 Bluesfest won the Helpmann Award for ‘Australia's best contemporary Music Festival'. Between 1994 and 2010 Bluesfest has consistently been awarded Rhythms Magazine readers poll for ‘Australia's Best Music Festival'. The only year Bluesfest did not win was in 1997 when it came second. The awards Bluesfest has won are unprecedented for a rural event.

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