Stormzy Glastonbury Review – a Glorious Victory Lap for Black British Culture (The Guardian)

Text 1: Stormzy Glastonbury Review – A Glorious Victory Lap for Black British Culture (The Guardian) Pyramid stage Not only is this headline performance a show of supreme talent, it also underlines how Stormzy’s talent and charisma has pushed forward UK rap. The notion of Stormzy headlining the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury is an intriguing one. On the one hand, an artist who’s only released one album being elevated to such a rarefied status – up there with Jay-Z, Paul McCartney, U2 and the Rolling Stones – seems unprecedented. On the other, a persistent rumour around the site suggests that Stormzy’s 5 show cost more to stage than any other in the festival’s history. That may or may not represent one of the histrionic myths that annually circulates around Worthy Farm – festival- goers with long enough memories to remember Glastonbury before the arrival of the internet and its fact-checking powers may recall the story that used to go around in the 1990s that Cliff Richard had unexpectedly died. But watching Stormzy perform, you can 10 believe it. His set opens with the kind of pyrotechnics most acts would use to triumphantly conclude their performance, and it doesn’t let up from that point on. You could argue that constitutes an attempt to bedazzle anyone who doesn’t think the 25- year-old rapper has enough material to fill a headlining set, but his performance passes without the kind of lulls you might expect from an artist without years and years of hits to 15 draw on. Bulking things up by wheeling out a cover of Shanks and Bigfoot’s UK garage chart-topper Sweet Like Chocolate proves an inspired move, likewise performing his remix of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You. The sense of all stops being pulled out is hard to miss. If the first three songs pass with Stormzy on stage, with only his union jack vest, his DJ and an intense light show for 20 company (the latter comes complete with a ticker tape that, instead of news events, shows the names of south London boroughs) that quickly changes. There’s a ballet interlude – designed to underline the fact that black ballet dancers now have shoes designed to match their skin tone – there’s a vast gospel choir, there are dancers, complete with a little kid busting moves, there are children on bikes popping wheelies as Stormzy performs Vossi 25 Bop. There are also special guests: if Ed Sheeran can’t be here in person, then Chris Martin from Coldplay can, playing keyboards and harmonising on Blinded By Your Grace Pt 1. ‘For all the eye-popping, OTT aspects of the show, there’s something very human and touching at its centre.’ Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images 30 For all the eye-popping, OTT aspects of the show, there’s something very human and touching at its centre. When not imperiously rapping, Stormzy looks genuinely overwhelmed by the size of the crowd he’s drawn on what he describes as “the greatest night of my life”. Another guest, fellow rapper Dave, congratulates Stormzy at length on his achievements before leaving the stage, and, under the circumstances, it doesn’t feel like 35 hyperbole. As Dave seems to suggest, Stormzy’s sheer charisma and talent have elevated an entire generation of black British music. Stormzy himself pays tribute to a string of new- school British rappers as varied as Little Simz, Not3s and Slowthai – and all of them would not be in such a strong position without Stormzy. As he performs Shut Up, the track that turned him from an underground figure to a 40 mainstream phenomenon, or stands centre-stage amid an explosion of confetti with arms outstretched before launching into Big for Your Boots, Stormzy’s performance doesn’t feel like a personal triumph so much as a victory lap for British rap: after decades as US rap’s poor relation, here it is, headlining the biggest music festival in the world in considerable style. Text 2 – Glastonbury 2009: A first-timer at Glastonbury Festival, Charles Spencer did his best to enjoy himself – but he failed. (The Telegraph) Two years ago I was sitting at home watching the last day of the Glastonbury Festival on the telly. I'd turned on largely in a spirit of schadenfreude, for this had been a wet festival even by Glastonbury's aquatic standards, and the faces in the crowd looked more like those of survivors of some terrible natural disaster than people having fun. As the rain lashed down, and a shambolic Amy Winehouse murdered her back catalogue, I made a ringing pronouncement: "I will never, ever go to Glastonbury," I declared. "Wild horses wouldn't drag me there." The gods, or the next best thing, newspaper executives, clearly have an ear for such pronouncements. Which was why, two years on, even older, even fatter, even more set in my comfortable and complacent ways, I was heading down the A303 towards Glasto, as everybody irritatingly insists on calling it. The fear and loathing were kicking in big time, indeed I was on the brink of a full-blown panic attack, and I realised I'd better take a brace. I've loved pop music since I was eight, a spectacular copper-pink sun was setting behind Stonehenge, and the Grateful Dead were playing on the car stereo. For God's sake Spencer, I told myself firmly. Make the most of it. Have fun. Rediscover your sense of youth and adventure. I tried. I really did. But mostly I had a terrible time. For a start, as a reformed drunk, I couldn't indulge in the drink and spliffs that seemed to be keeping most people going, taking the edge off an often far from enjoyable reality. Glastonbury, with its combination of sanctimonious bossiness and sheer inefficiency, seems like a hideous microcosm of Gordon Brown's Britain, though it is true that almost everyone at Glastonbury is pleasant, in a benignly unfocused kind of way. But there is that strange sense of drift that seems to affect almost every aspect of Britain at present. The big opening act, for instance, was the hot, hip Maximo Park. But they weren't playing on one of the main stages. They were playing in a small circus tent. Why? Huge crowds of people gathered to watch them on big screens, creating a jam from which it was impossible to escape. The sense of claustrophobia was overpowering, and the woman in front of me was whimpering on the ground, suffering from heat exhaustion. When the band started playing, the sound system on the screens outside wasn't working, and all we could hear was a faint bass thump from the distant tent. Famously patient, the festival goers rightly began to boo; the sound was only finally fixed as the band neared the end of their set. When I asked the soundman why it had taken so long, he rudely told me to shut up. I'm sure Gordon Brown would have done just the same if I'd asked about MPs' expenses or the failing economy. Then there's the constant bossiness, not just the checking of wristbands and tickets by the armies of security staff, which seems like a ghastly premonition of what Britain will be like when ID cards are introduced, but the smug insistence on Green values. There's a particularly irritating billboard covered with such pious platitudes as "Stop, Look, Love", "War on Waste, Leave No Trace" and the admittedly rather delightful "Give Bees a Chance". But bees wouldn't have much of a chance at Glasto during the festival. Arriving at night and looking down on the site, it resembles nothing so much as a vast industrial complex despoiling the Somerset countryside. Generators hum, arc lights blaze, cars choke the surrounding roads. The festival's carbon footprint, despite the Greenpeace bus that proudly announces it runs on discarded cooking oil, must be massive. My feelings of anxious loneliness were occasionally relieved by the sheer niceness of the festival-goers I spoke to. Crusties and old hippies are thin on the ground at Glastonbury these days. The audience seems to be predominantly middle class (they need to be with a ticket price of 175 quid), with lots of private school teenagers celebrating the end of exams and couples in their thirties and forties trying to persuade themselves that their youth isn't entirely over. I also enjoyed the wacky stalls offering everything from vegetarian shoes – "A treat for your feet if you don't eat meat" – to "healing crystals hand-mined with love". But even the healing crystals couldn't stop the rain. At 8.30pm there was spectacular thunder and lightning, and one of those downpours that drench you to the skin in less than a minute. Could it have been the gods from the festival's Sacred Space, with its ancient standing stones, announcing the death of Michael Jackson? Perhaps it was. At all events, after twelve gruelling hours at the festival, and dripping from head to toe, I decided I'd had enough. The feeling of relief as I left the site, with the grass just beginning its inevitable transition into glutinous mud, was little short of ecstatic. .

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