Has Glastonbury Festival become too big to keep its soul?
This June 25th marks the opening of the Glastonbury Festival, an iconic event in British culture. Long considered a bastion of independent music and emerging artists, is it not now a victim of its own success and the race for gigantism? Worries the British press.
This festival should be a "British pride," says Emily Bootle, a journalist for the daily The i Paper . In its fifty-five years of existence, Glastonbury, more essential than ever, has become one of the last "bastions of the arts" still standing, in these times of austerity that the cultural sector is going through, in the United Kingdom as in France .
This Wednesday, June 25, the iconic festival, best known for its musical lineup but also dedicated to the performing arts, returns for a new edition, until Sunday, June 29. As every June since 1970, the town of Pilton, in the county of Somerset, will become the meeting place for thousands of festival-goers from all over the world. There are expected to be 210,000 this year, gathered for a program which, on the musical side, brings together, among others, Neil Young , the American pop star Olivia Rodrigo and the rapper Doechii .
Some programming choices, however, have caused a bit of controversy, such as the invitation to the Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap, which has been at the center of several controversies . One of its members recently appeared in court in London on charges of "terrorist offenses," accused of waving a flag of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement during a concert in November. In an interview with the tabloid The Sun , Prime Minister Keir Starmer deemed the group's appearance "inappropriate."
But gaining stature sometimes means losing a bit of its identity. In this case, Glastonbury would no longer be quite the same, if you believe it
Courrier International
