By JON PARELES

NEW YORK, June 10, 1997 (The New York Times Company) -- The Tibetan Freedom Concerts, the only rock festival with an on-site temple, took over Downing Stadium on Randalls Island for the weekend. Two dozen rock and hip-hop groups donated their performances, including million-dollar-selling acts like the Beastie Boys, U2, Alanis Morissette, a Tribe Called Quest, the Foo Fighters and members of Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Oasis, more star power than the summer's commercial package tours. Saturday's attendance was 19,500; Sunday, headlined by the Beastie Boys, drew 27,500.

The concerts were benefits for the nonprofit Milarepa Foundation, supporting human rights and independence for Tibet. Adam Yauch, the Beastie Boy who organized the concerts after staging a similar weekend last summer in San Francisco, also intended the shows to generate political support for Tibetan independence and to promote nonviolence, a Buddhist principle. Like the Beastie Boys' own music, the lineup drew on hip-hop, mainstream rock, punk, blues, reggae, dance music and avant-rock. Traditional and modern Tibetan musicians also performed short sets.

Prayer flags fluttered from the speaker towers, and each of the seven-hour shows opened and closed with chants by monks from the Drepung Loseling monastery. In a large tent, monks chanted longer ceremonies. They also worked on a sand mandala, an intricate painting in sand that was completed and then swept away on Sunday as a lesson in impermanence.

Between sets, speakers told the audience of teen-agers and people in their 20s that China has occupied Tibet since 1950 and has brutally suppressed Tibetan culture and religion. They urged boycotts of goods made in China and of Bass Ale, which owns the Holiday Inn in Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

Volunteers circulated petitions and postcards awaiting signatures. The Voice of America broadcast the concert to Tibet, although listening to it there was illegal.

At every benefit, performers decide whether and how to link their music to the cause. Rappers replaced party slogans with shouts of "Free Tibet!"; on Saturday afternoon, K.R.S.-1 commanded, "All the people in the house who would like to see democracy in Tibet, make some noise!" Some rockers combed their catalogs for songs about freedom and faith. And in a heartfelt set that moved between meditation and fervor, Patti Smith had a new song, "1959," comparing the freedom of the Beat writers in America to the Chinese clampdown in Tibet.

Private angst may seem to pale before the situation in Tibet, but that's what fills many rock repertories, and that's what many performers brought. Porno for Pyros, in quasi-Indian dress, gently strummed its way through Perry Farrell's mournful, whimsical free associations. The Foo Fighters countered frustrations with bursts of punk rock frenzy and whiplash pauses.

Radiohead's songs about alienation and resentment seethed with dramatic crescendos; Blur's celebrations of cantankerous individuality bristled with the noise and feedback the band recently learned from American bands like Pavement. And Pavement itself made its paradoxes triumphant, contradicting its wide open California-rock melodies with discordant guitars and cryptic lyrics.

For hip-hop, punk and ska bands, the best response to perceived persecution is to have fun anyway. The Beastie Boys, now grown up, have held on to their inner teen-ager; leaping around the stage in red jumpsuits, they slipped uplifting messages between stretches of smart-alecky boasts and fuzz-toned punk rock. K.R.S.-1, sharing the stage with break dancers and a female singer, used booming old-school drumbeats to insist on the primacy of old-fashioned, positive-thinking hip-hop. A Tribe Called Quest mixed call-and-response, boasts and tales of hanging out; Biz Markie's set was good-natured comedy.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones played peppy, socially conscious ska songs with their lead singer, Dickey Barrett, out in the audience; Rancid, a California band that pays homage to the Clash, needed two guitarists because one was always jumping around. Taj Mahal's band moved from Chicago blues to Memphis soul to hard-bop; the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion played its hyperactive rockabilly parody, grunting, "You got to do it baby! Free Tibet!"

For many rockers, thoughts of Tibet brought out their quieter side; instead of sure-fire crowd-rousing hits, they turned to ballads and lesser-known songs. In a surprise appearance on Sunday morning, 15 minutes before the concert's announced starting time, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam strummed electric guitars and brooded through "Corduroy," "Yellow Ledbetter" and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."

Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M. played "Undertow," "New Leper Test" and "Electrolite," about spirituality, compassion and love; then Vedder and McCready joined them, as Stipe sang Vedder's rumination on death, "Long Road," while Vedder tried wordless parts originally recorded by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. For its set, U2 played five songs that shared a single mood, pondering love and belief; Ben Harper, the college circuit's leading protest-blues singer, sang about determination and police brutality amid fast-fingered slide-guitar riffs.

A few performers used the concerts to introduce new material and formats. Ms. Morissette, backed by acoustic guitars, sang new songs about growing up and breaking up, with echoes of Joni Mitchell. Sonic Youth played only one song with vocals, ending a set of instrumental rock that floated and clanged, with consonances bursting into chirping, roaring dissonances. Bjork brought the oddest lineup: a keyboardist and an eight-member string section, turning her songs into undulating abstractions.

There were some disappointments. Lee Perry, a legendary reggae producer making his New York debut, had a good band (led by Mad Professor) and a wacky stars-and-stripes outfit, but he devoted his set to creaky rants. Noel Gallagher, from Oasis, made his own songs excruciating as he strummed a distortion-swathed guitar. But for most of the concert, the musicians played as if they were humbled by Tibet's plight yet determined to make a difference.