Key events
Kneecap reviewed
Gwilym Mumford
Woodsies, 11.30
Ambiguity, it’s fair to say, is not a prominent word in Belfast republican rap trio Kneecap’s vocabulary. The DJ wearing a tricolour balaclava is the first big clue. As is the big screen flashing up “fenian” in giant letters during a song about a sexual encounter one of the duo had with a Protestant girl, or the frequent shouts of “Brits Out!”
This directness is a necessity, given Kneecap rap the bulk of their songs in Gaelic, a language scarcely spoken in Ireland, let alone in a field in Somerset. (“You are not having a psychotic breakdown. We are rapping in Irish”, quips member Mo Chara.) But it’s a language barrier easily overcome by the trio’s sheer exuberance during their Woodsies set, bounding across the stage, tops off six songs in. The mix of politics and comedy is a potent one – Your Sniffer Dogs are Shite is an anti-stop and search screed that also manages to be very funny. (“A dog shouldn’t have a fucking job,” adlibs Móglaí Bap while introducing it.) But they are also sincere, as when unfurling a large Palestinian flag in response to the ongoing situation in Gaza. “We love the British people – we just don’t like your Tory government,” shouts Chara at the set’s close. Playing to the gallery perhaps, but at Glastonbury who has time for nuance?
Kara Jackson reviewed
Laura Snapes
Park stage, 12.45pm
Kara Jackson has a lovely, meandering slow river of a voice, unhurried and explorative: a good booking for this sun-baked Park stage set, which beckons a spread of appreciative listeners reclining on the browning grass. The Illinois songwriter – and former US national youth laureate poet – is alone on stage, steadily strumming her guitar, and the exposure feels brave. But her songs and performance speak to an assured level of interiority. “Don’t you bother me / Can’t you see I’m free?” she sings on Free. And perhaps the subject of her freedom is hymned on Dickhead Blues, which Jackson introduces with an apology to any children present.
It’s actually less a lament than a sort of joyful tease of some schmuck she’s left behind, her voice breaking out of its easy groove into a skittish, almost devilish cadence. Much as Dua Lipa did last night, she tells us it has been a long-held dream to play here, the result of her family always finding ways to watch Glastonbury on the TV (a harder task in the US than here). It’s a dream quietly realised this lunchtime.
Jason bumped into these two on the way out of Femi Kuti: Alex and Olly, or rather “Agnes and Ophelia”, from Bristol. Why are they dressed as their grandmothers? “There’s no sense to it at all. The whole group just wanted to dress up like grannies so here we are!”
Note that we’re experiencing some internet issues out in the fields here, so apologies for any slow updates to the liveblog in the coming minutes.
After that intergenerational set, Kuti has passed the baton onto the next generation down: Ayra Starr, a huge pop star in Nigeria who is making inroads in the UK thanks to new album The Year I Turned 21. Jason recently interviewed her for us:
Femi Kuti reviewed
Jason Okundaye
Pyramid stage, 12pm
Forty minutes before Afrobeat maestro Femi Kuti begins, the crowd are already beginning to gather for the soundcheck. An a cappella run of Oyimbo, with its repeated chant “All in the name of peace”, teases the show’s narrative.
When Kuti comes out, he runs on to the stage carrying a saxophone in a shocking burst of energy for this sometimes sleepy midday slot. Accompanied by his band Positive Force, which consists of four brass players, two guitarists, two percussionists and three backing singers who double up as booty swinging dancers, Kuti sets the stage for a party to begin.
A pioneer of pop productions melting into Afrobeat, he begins his set with Truth Don Die. It’s striking how immediately the crowd are dancing with him, but their familiarity is a testament to how much of a staple the Kuti family have been to Glastonbury. There is only a single Nigerian flag flying, with a football shirt and, er, an inflatable ghost tied to it (“So our family can spot us on TV,” says the holder), and the crowd is drawn from a broad pool of Glastonbury attendees. Kuti taps into the long legacy of Nigerian political music, performing Stop the Hate with the balance of righteous fury and peace-and-love messaging which defines his oeuvre. He takes a moment to tell us “People, there’s just too much pain everywhere”, namechecking Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia (to more hesitant applause), and Gaza. “It’s why we’ve got to spread love.”
Kuti’s dancing and powerful voice are infectious. It is much hotter than it was yesterday, and he says: “I’m going to try and participate in the heat with you guys, are you ready to groove?” On classic polemic track Pà Pá Pà, Kuti sings “Government must not waste our time” and “make them give us good healthcare”, as the jazzy, groovy band build a feverish energy. Later, on Corruption Na Stealing – a descendant of his father Fela Kuti’s Authority Stealing – he sings: “The big people like to praise themselves / But corruption na stealing.” Raging against your corrupt, lying, thieving government is evidently a bridge between British and Nigerian political identities. But audience participation does falter when he attempts to get the front row to sing scales with him. He is unimpressed by their avoidance: “I thought great singers came out of the UK – are you guys proving me wrong?”
Forty years ago, his father Fela closed Glastonbury with his band Egypt 80 and introduced a young Femi to the world. Femi followed this tradition in 2010 introducing his son, Made. “But he was so small, he’s a big man now” he says, when introducing Made again, who carries his own saxophone. In 2021, father and son released the album Legacy+, and for this show’s closer they play saxophones in unison, until the younger Kuti takes over.
The Kutis have established a generational legacy at Glastonbury, and it will hopefully be regenerated again and again in the years to come.
Fred Again brought one of the great moments of Glastonbury last year, playing to an astonishingly massive crowd on the Other stage – you got the sense that an entire generation whose clubbing had been in arrested development due to Covid were experiencing gigantic release. Now he’s cropped up this year, too, in a totally unannounced secret set at Strummerville – and in a totally different musical context, playing an ambient set on Friday of new material and tracks from last year’s collaborative album with Brian Eno. Some pics below:
There’s a notable TBA slot on the large outdoor Levels dance stage later – could it be Fred?
47Soul reviewed
11.30, West Holts
Alongside the usual novelty headwear and banners at Glastonbury, there’s a not-insubstantial amount of Palestinian flags on site this year. And here at the West Holts stage for 47Soul, they are vast in numbers, accompanied by plenty of keffiyehs and football shirts bearing Palestinian colours.
The cause is deeply rooted in 47Soul: formed just over a decade ago in Jordan, all four members have ancestral ties to Palestine. Accordingly, flags and scarves are draped around the instrument stands as they step on stage. The group are architects of a style they refer to as shamstep – a heady mix of electronic music, hip-hop and traditional sounds from the Levantine region weaved around politically-conscious commentary. Between their deeply rhythmic, winding songs about displacement, borders and hope (sung in a mix of Arabic and English), they call for a moment’s silence for the “martyrs of Palestine in this ongoing genocide” and thank local Somerset action groups for their support. When the sound returns after it frustratingly cuts out mid-set, the devoted listeners and dancers in the audience cheer and chant “free free Palestine!” Later on, several dabke dances break out.
But as well as being engaging political messengers, they are excellent musicians in their own right. Their stomping, syncopated percussion, tickling synth lines and chanting vocals make for some absolute heaters. It’s great, driving music that feels as suited to a smoky club as it does to a sunny festival afternoon. Shukran!
Femi Kuti’s set sounded extremely sunshine-appropriate as it floated over to our little cabin behind the Pyramid stage – here’s some photos from his performance, and we’ll have a review from Jason up shortly.
Some more pics from Idles last night.
Remarkably, the migrant boat that we all thought was part of their gig actually had nothing to do with them and they weren’t even aware of it – it was an intervention by Banksy. News on that here:
Nice interview here with Serge from Kasabian, who, if the rumour mill is to be believed, will be doing a secret set at 6pm on the Woodsies stage.
Charli xcx’s Partygirl set reviewed (from Friday night)
Laura Snapes
Levels, 12.30am
Currently, the only place you can get hold of official Charli xcx merch is at one of her shows or Partygirl DJ sets. That might seem a counterintuitive move given the massive success of her new album Brat, but I think it’s possibly one of the savviest things any pop star has done in recent memory: fans have filled the vacuum with homemade merch, from lime green caps with a printout of the word “brat” safety-pinned on, to handpainted hi-vis vests, non-PG corruptions of the Taylor Swift friendship bracelet craze, and even earrings with tiny dangling lurid plastic bags on them. The evidently loving effort that has gone into all this makes the phenomenon seem even more legit, and it’s the DIY chartreuse faithful who are propping up the front row of Charli’s much-anticipated Glastonbury DJ set at the enclosed Levels space.
As with most of the festival’s flashpoints, it is wildly over-subscribed almost to the point of being anxiety-inducing. The fear of losing one’s spot is such that there’s a lot of peeing in cups going on. Charli barely needs ask “Who’s having a Brat summer?” when she takes to the decks at 12.30am and plays 365, the song’s narcotic lyrics very much summing up the activity in the front few rows.
A couple of weeks ago, Charli released a magnificent remix of Girl, So Confusing with a new verse from Lorde – accurately rumoured as the does-she-like-me subject of the song – and both of them turned up at Troye Sivan’s show in London on Thursday, leading to fevered speculation that the New Zealand pop star might appear tonight. She doesn’t in the end – and maybe that introspective song wouldn’t have fitted the battering-ram, uppers-o’clock mood of the night. But after Charli plays a snatch of AG Cook’s Britpop, on which she features, the lesser-spotted pop royal Robyn appears (fresh from guesting with Jamie xx on Woodsies). They don’t play their remix of 360 (also featuring Yung Lean), but instead jam Robyn’s classics With Every Heartbeat and Dancing on My Own – scarcely singing the songs, more ecstatically hugging each other to the point of almost tumbling over, and dancing around. Then Romy turns up too and they’re all arm in arm, waving cigs in the air, lairy as a post-victory football team.
Sometimes I never want to hear the phrase “female friendship” uttered again – a phenomenon so examined and fetishised it’s become cloying and commercialised – but the euphoria of this set stems from witnessing the clear, joyous support among the three of them. As Romy takes over and plays a turbo-speed remix of Ariana Grande’s Into You, Robyn leans over her shoulder to take a selfie of them. Shygirl also makes an appearance. It’s adorable and life-affirming, and that mood spills over into the quickly-forming Brat-based friendships in the crowd.
“I need you to go fucking feral!” Charli yells before Von Dutch – evidently not having witnessed the cup-based toilet activities – and makes us sing Club Classics twice to do it louder. Whereas being a fan of some pop stars these days feels like a tiresome act of duty, even like tithing, Charli knows how to make us work for it in a way that feels uniquely reciprocal.
Fontaines DC reviewed (from last night)
Gwilym Mumford
Park stage, 11pm
Few bands have been as successful at leapfrogging up the Glasto lineup as Fontaines DC. Since their 2019 bow, when they squeezed four energetic sets into one festival weekend, the Dublin post-punkers (though that description grows less accurate with every new album) have managed a well-received Other stage set in 2022 and are now here playing their first headliner slot. They seem to be on the glide path to superstardom, and have the swagger to match, particularly in the form of Grian Chatten, channelling Korn singer Jonathan Davis with a leather skirt, and stalking the stage like a third, even surlier Gallagher brother.
It’s up for debate whether Fontaines yet quite have the songs to match the marked upturn in exposure. There are moments here, notably when the band settle into a succession of moody mid-tempo tracks from A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia, that you can hear the otherwise up-for-it, flare-waving audience’s attention wavering. But the hits really do hit: Chatten is matched word for word by the crowd on the barrelling back room punk of Boys in the Better Land and the caustic anti-ballad I Love You. They conclude rather daringly with two new songs: the pretty jangle of Favourite and the exuberant rap metal of Starburster. It’s a risk that pays off: both already feel festival-sized, and the amount of people copying Chatten’s strange hyperventilating howls on the latter makes for one of the stranger singalong moments of the festival. Pyramid for them next time?
First up on the Pyramid stage is Femi Kuti, returning to the stage where 40 years ago this year his father Fela delivered one of the greatest sets in the festival’s history: just two tracks, Confusion Break Bone and Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense, but together stretching out for around 70 minutes.
Jason Okundaye is watching Femi, and was chatting to fans beforehand – here’s Deji, 33:
“Today is Nigeria day! I think it’s excellent, and I’ve been saying that the biggest export out of Nigeria is culture. Which is probably incorrect – it’s probably oil – but everywhere you go out now you hear Nigerian music. To see the crowds and how people are learning more about it is excellent.”
Immediately following Kuti is his countrywoman Ayra Starr, while Little Simz, playing this evening, is also of Nigerian heritage.
Welcome to Saturday at Glastonbury!
Hello again! After a night of much dancing (and queueing) everyone is back for more – but operating with around 15% less health, like a videogame character who accidentally drank too many frozen daiquiris. And that’s just the Guardian team.
Today has another fabulously crowdpleasing lineup, topped with the most strongly triangulated Pyramid act of all: Coldplay, performing their record-breaking fifth headline set tonight. Before them it’s Little Simz with the biggest gig of her career, and Michael Kiwanuka before her. We’ll be liveblogging everything from now until the confetti has died away post-Coldplay – join us for incisive reviews, amazing photography and a general sense of the magic and mayhem.