My first Glastonbury experience, in the year 2000, began with a bunch of strangers from university, and a spare seat in the driver’s vintage Mini. Loaded with five students and their camping gear, the Mini didn’t make it – we broke down in Birmingham on the way down from York. But we music fans did.
The first song I heard live at that festival was Toploader’s Achilles Heel. But it got better. It was the summer I went to watch Happy Mondays only to be sidetracked by some compelling emotive indie-rock and discover a band called Muse, playing songs from their newly released debut album Showbiz. I also sought out a group celebrating Shabbat, and davened in a field.
I remember the music, the chats under the stars in the green fields where all around the ambience was one of love and peace, and the stardust in my eyes. A few years later, living the dream reviewing Glastonbury for The Independent as the newspaper’s rock and pop editor, the stardust was still there. But it was lost this weekend.
With a Kneecap member’s terror charge, to allow the Irish rap trio to perform at Glastonbury was always going to be a risk. Not just because of the rhetoric they might use, but in the way that endorsing them paved the way for others. Others in the form of Bob Vylan.
“Death, death to the IDF”, chanted London-based Vylan from the festival’s West Holts stage, and, terrifyingly, the crowd lapped it up. Vylan’s incitement led thousands to bay for the death of the Israeli army. That anyone could be allowed to do something as dangerous as shout death to a group of people at a festival is shocking. And as if that weren’t enough, it was broadcast live on the BBC.
After thousands had watched the spectacle, Glastonbury organisers said they were “appalled” by the comments from Vylan (who I’ve heard has since been dropped by their management and agent). “Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence,” said the festival.
While Glastonbury’s statement is welcome, it is hard to understand how the possibility of such an outcome was not foreseen, particularly when the festival had platformed talks by the likes of Owen Jones and suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana, and made space for a Palestine museum, with nothing to acknowledge the Nova festival massacre of October 7. For an industry that is so vocal about injustice, the music one – including the music press – has remained strangely silent about the 378 people murdered at Nova when concerts were put on to commemorate the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 and the Bataclan massacre in Paris two years earlier.
The hypocrisy of the industry’s endorsement of Kneecap, while silencing the British Jewish band Oi Va Voi, is astonishing. How is it possible that the UK can allow the cancellation of Dudu Tassa, and then Oi Va Voi, for nothing other than their singer being Israeli?
A study by campaign group Freedom in Arts last month revealed that people in the arts are too afraid to speak freely about Gaza because organisations are “oppressively politicised” with “one-sided views of social issues stifling debate”. It’s no surprise that the study showed that Left and woke is the only stance considered acceptable in the arts.
Glastonbury is no different. When a group of people from the music industry sent a “private and confidential” signed letter to Glastonbury’s bookers urging for Kneecap’s removal from the bill it led to death threats when their names were leaked online.
I’m thinking back to before Glastonbury was a sea of flags, chants, statements, and division. It was about music and togetherness. It was a place to which you could escape. And some musicians agree.
“You listen to music or go to an event not to pontificate and think about politics and global s***,” Chase and Status’s Saul Milton told me. “It's your escape. I'm like, ‘This is my few hours raving where I'm not having to think about whatever it is.’”
Since when did artists feel the pressure from fans and the industry to “pontificate” on political matters? Only last week Azealia Banks claimed that the promoters of her Boomtown and Maiden Voyage festival performances were trying to “force” her to say “Free Palestine” – which Boomtown has since denied. She cancelled her appearances.
Matt Healy told festival goers during The 1975’s Friday night show, “Use your platform, that's what they say, right? People who are watching this might be disappointed at the lack of politics in this show and our forthcoming shows, because I always know it's a conscious decision, and we honestly don't want our legacy to be one of politics.
“We want it to be that of love and friendship. You can go out into the world, and there's loads of politics everywhere. And I think we don't need more politics, we need more love and friendship.”
I couldn‘t agree more.
Perhaps, one day, the stardust can once again be for everyone – Jews included.
