Glastonbury has always struck a hippyish balancing act between hyperpolitical consciousness and blissful escapism, a mix personified by Michael Eavis, the festival’s earnest and permanently smiling founder. But when the result of the Brexit referendum was announced last year it felt like the atmosphere was wrong-footed. Was leave a victory for evil racists, or the good rural people sick of urban elites? At a loss, people mollified themselves with booing any references to David Cameron made by performers. At least with him, we knew where we all stood.
It is not easy being a politically aware music festival, which is why so few major ones are. Go to Coachella in California, or Leeds and Reading in the UK, and you can hardly tell what year it is, such is their determined obliviousness to the outside world. (The fact that so many festivals now rely on big names familiar to generations past doesn’t help, either. Leeds is relying this year on the cutting edge appeal of Kasabian, Eminem and Muse.)
But Glastonbury has always been unafraid of risking mainstream appeal, wrapping the site in socialist posters, sprinkling right-on stalls campaigning for human rights in Tibet amid the usual burger vendors.
Now, pop music has finally come round to Glastonbury’s way of thinking. After several decades of stars eschewing politics, today to have the most cred you need to seem the most credibly engaged with the issues. Kendrick Lamar and Solange have gained large followings with unapologetically political albums. Beyoncé and, rather less convincingly, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry have attempted to, as Vice recently put it, “board the woke train”; “woke” being the current vogue term for political enlightenment. But given Perry used to think that global consciousness equated to dressing as national stereotypes such as geishas, she is a perfect illustration of why politics and pop can be a hard trick to pull off.
Glastonbury’s politics are never hard to find. This year, up in the Green Fields and Healing Fields, there were the usual vegan food trucks, multiple CND posters and lectures on the importance of bees. Nobody can doubt the heartfelt nature of Glastonbury’s values, and those values have not altered a jot in 30 years (not for nothing does Eavis feel such affinity with Jeremy Corbyn). But these things were always here, backdrops that are easy for most festival goers to walk past and barely see. This year’s festival was different.
When it was announced that Corbyn would be appearing, prior to US hip-hop group Run the Jewels, there was a sense that politicians were going to cause a bigger stir than the headliners. They were certainly outshining the celebrities. On Thursday night, Johnny Depp appeared at the new on-site cinema. But while he wandered about, looking less like Johnny Depp and a lot more like a cut-price Keith Richards, it was my Glastonbury co-correspondent, Ed Balls, who was being swamped with requests for selfies.
By Friday, the political statements were coming out. “Strong and stable? Weak and wobbly” and “Choose Corbyn” were popular T-shirt slogans. Up in Block 9, the festival’s wildest corner, artist Tony Hornecker created an art installation featuring tombstones bearing the names of Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Amber Rudd, David Cameron and George Osborne. A crucifix bore the to-the-point message “Fuck austerity”, while a sign pointed to the “Universicool of St Corbyn’s.”
St Corbyn was properly deified by Friday afternoon. “Oh Jer-e-my Cor-byn,” sung – vaguely – to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army was fast emerging as the festival anthem. It was sung heartily by people who either didn’t remember or didn’t care that exactly a year ago Corbyn had cancelled a Glastonbury appearance after the referendum result, where he almost certainly would have faced a fair few furious remainers. But, as we all know now, a lot can change in politics in a year.
Up by the Park stage, artist Zara Gaze created a sand sculpture of Theresa May being chased through a field of wheat by Corbyn atop a fox.
“Ninety-eight per cent of the people who have seen it so far have had a really positive response,” Gaze told me.
And what about the other 2%?
“A couple of people have dissed Corbyn. But everyone expects Glastonbury to be political, and they just give you total creative freedom here. That’s why it’s great.”
Before the festival even started there had been some mockery on social media when its full schedule went online and one stage, on one afternoon, featured debates such as “mansplaining and misogyny” and a talk from John McDonnell. But well-meaning liberalism has never been the full story here. Michelle Willis has helped run the backstage bar at the Park stage for a decade, during which time, in 2015, she stood for election as an MP for Ynys Mon – as a Conservative.
Did she find it weird working here when so many people have different politics to her?
“No, I’m open-minded. Also Emily [Eavis, Michael’s daughter, now co-organiser of the festival] has values that tick my boxes, like raising awareness of charities,” she said.
So she was not bothered that Corbyn was coming? She made a small grimace. “Well, I’m not going to see him, but that’s my choice. Like I’m not going to see Radiohead because I find them completely dreary.”
Speaking of Radiohead, while they were greeted on Friday night by a largely adoring audience, there were a few Palestinian flags waving about in protest at the band’s upcoming gig in Israel. Now, we can argue all day about the values or otherwise of a cultural boycott, and plenty at the festival would be happy to do so, but imagine the political fury that would drive someone to schlep such a flag to Worthy Farm, and try to imagine that happening at any other festival. It is impossible. Lord Buckethead, Theresa May’s nemesis at the last election, got more cheers than Sleaford Mods, whom he introduced. Anyone who claims Glastonbury attendees aren’t politically engaged perhaps spent too long in the VIP bars and not enough time in the actual festival.
Which is not to say that it’s all po-faced politics here. While Radiohead performed their set, Major Lazer played the most fun and least woke gig of the festival. Women in thongs twerked around the fully clad male DJs, Diplo, Jillionaire and Walshy Fire. “No matter what’s happening elsewhere in the outside world, we can still come here to have a great fucking time!” Diplo bellowed, right before exhorting the crowd to take off their shirts. He didn’t take the time to share his thoughts on CND.
By Saturday, it was full-on Corbynmania, and his talk on stage attracted, at a casual estimate, twice as many people as Radiohead. Unfortunately, this led to the most unpleasant instance of kettling many Glastonbury attendees had ever experienced, an ironically ugly experience after a speech about the importance of unity. But there was no doubt that, as much as Corbyn loved speaking to a worshipful huge crowd, they loved him back twice as much.
Glastonbury – like the best kind of pop music – is both woke and non-woke: too much of one and it would be boring, too much of the other would feel dumb, especially now. The reason it really works is because it does both convincingly and unapologetically.
As it happened, two of the pop stars who have defined the new woke pop both played after Corbyn on Saturday: Katy Perry and Solange. Perry was flat-out cheesy, her political exhortations limited to “Does this mean I’m cool?” Solange, by contrast, was like a thrillingly original art project, in both the songs and visuals. When she sang F.U.B.U., she picked out the black women in the audience of this usually almost wholly Caucasian festival, and sang directly to them. It was a lesson in how to make woke pop both fun and beautiful, at the most fun and beautifully woke festival of them all.
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