DiSpatch: What a Glastonbury First-Timer Found - Hope, Love, Unity, Resistance & Joy

0:05Do you remember the first time? Not the Pulp Lyric, but not unrelated to Pulp. Do you remember the first time you went to a big festival? And do you remember the first time that you realised the big festival you went to was actually quite small compared to Glastonbury? If you've ever been to Glastonbury, you will know that it becomes a city for a week. A city built around music and politics and fun and escapism. And although escapism and politics don't sound like something we put in a sentence together, actually something about the combination is really powerful. If you've never been to Glastonbury, it might sound like a load of nonsense.

0:47so when I was chatting to Emma Wilkes who's writing a few pieces for Drowning Sound over the coming weeks and she told me she was off to Glastonbury and not only was she off to Glastonbury but it was her first Glastonbury I was curious what would Glastonbury look like through the eyes of someone who's been to some really big rock festivals and how can she both remind us of the magic of going for the first time or take someone who's never been there before into the festival with fresh eyes. She was joined by Josh Craggs, our new podcast producer, who has been to Glastonbury very many times since he was very, very little.

1:25And they both went for a wonder. They met some punters, they asked people what they were hoping for. And at the end of this episode, you can hear whether their expectations met reality. But first, before Emma left, she recorded us a little voice now. Hello and welcome to the Drowned in Sound podcast. My name is Emma Wilkes and this is my first Glastonbury.

1:52So it's currently Sunday and I am sitting at my desk in my room and my bedroom is currently covered in clothes more so than usual. I usually have a bit of a floor drape going on but we've got organised chaos going on behind me. I'm quite used to packing for festivals this time of year because as a music journalist I'm doing a lot of them. They are the highlight of my summer. I've been to a lot of different kinds of festivals. I've been to big ones like Download and Reading and my calendar is also full of smaller independent ones like Slam Dunk, 2000 Trees, bloodstock arc tangent etc but i have never been to glastonbury i always kind of fancy going because i want to experience it for myself i've heard some amazing things from people about what an amazing time it is and more than one person has told me being at glastonbury was the best time of their life it was something i maybe always found slightly intimidating maybe because of the size and the amount of walking involved but then I stopped and thought ah this is the year I stopped saying I'll get round to it eventually and actually go to Glastonbury seeing as I have this weekend free and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

3:26What do you think your highlight of the festival is going to be?

3:32Do you know? I've got no idea because I haven't walked into that tent yet randomly to find it. How do you imagine you're going to feel on Monday? Knackered, I think. I think I just finished uni, so I think on Monday after Glace is finished as well, I think finishing uni, Glace finishing, it's all going to crash down on me, possibly. Congratulations on finishing the festival. What do you think your highlight of the festival is going to be? Oh, my highlight of the festival? What's it going to be? That's a very good question. There's a band happening on Sunday night. I think Sunday night is the most feral because everyone's really sad that it's almost over.

4:13So I'm excited for about midnight Sunday when I finish my last shift and I get to go hang out with all the feral people. it's thursday and we're currently outside rustic badger and yeah so how has your glass and brie been so far oh my gosh i don't know where to start really i mean in some ways it's quite like a surreal thing but also like my mind has been blown a few times already even just by like the simplest things i mean on wednesday there's not been like loads of like music and such but it's meant I've got I've had some time to explore but there's I think and that's that's the bit that's kind of drawn me in most just everything that you can see away from the stages I ended up saying with like the way so many of these areas are like so heavily themed and there's so much attention to detail I jokingly said to a friend that maybe it's like the music festival version of Alton Towers which I mean in the highest of esteem is somebody who went to Alton Towers a lot growing up um because you know it had that sort of fantasy world escapist aspect to it but it's also kind of not escapist in a way because there's some parts that are so like environmentally and politically driven I found a little uh section called permaculture that was dedicated to all of that and sustainability and stuff like that and um stumbled across stumbled across some weird stuff i found i found like a little love den thing which was very cute um but then i was like well shame i can't bring somebody in here it was really really sweet um there were people cook those people cooking there were people cooking like vegetarian food around there it was really sweet um later on i explored the uh like woodseas area and found this tree house slash like tree walkway thing and look absolutely beautiful this must have been i must have found us about 10, 11 o 'clock at night and it was all lit up beautifully.

6:19At this point in the festival, I went over to check out a panel hosted by the team at Terminal One. Terminal One was first introduced to Glastonbury last year as a unique and immersive space designed to foster conversation and reflection about migration and borders. It was famously built from salvage materials, including Signature from Heathrow's now disused Terminal One. and it operates under the ethos, no human is illegal. It serves as both a creative installation and a platform for diverse international artists and performers. One of the artists involved was Leim Leighton, a Brazilian artist, activist and educator who works for the organisation In Place of War and serves as the musical director of the supergroup Girl, which comprises musicians from countries including Ghana, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Brazil, Venezuela and the UK.

7:10I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Leymar to talk about the festival and her work. It's a reason that celebrates stuff like this, especially from an immigration perspective, where the narrative of the media is just wrangling. It's interesting as a Brazilian as well because I live in London for 15 years now. I've been really lucky to be able to work with a lot of musicians and have a really prolific music career in London. But when it comes to a festival like this, you can see the demographic is very, very British and very white and very, you know, although it's like forward thinking people, amazing, really good.

7:48it's so important to bring these other voices in here as well not only the local activism and the guild activism that you have like as british citizens you have a lot of like colonial guilds you know i understand all of that i'm also from a country that's been colonized and so on but once you have these voices coming with their fresh uh perspective like what is it what is it to be a British Nigerian person what is it to be no one's from one place everyone's from everywhere and that's how it should be at a stage like this so important like terminal one you're talking about like no borders and just going through an experience of a of a airport situation if you go upstairs to the to the experience they have offering you can feel on your skin how hard it could be many different people and it's like so good that there is a way of showing this kind of experience what it is to be um black what is to not have much resources what is to be a woman you know to the wider public so i think it's really important that it's happening here yeah especially what you were just talking about in the panel as well with a couple of the women talking about like this idea like a multiplicity of identity being two things belonging to two everything's not quite feeling like you fit into one entirely so yeah exactly i mean like we can go on about destroying the patriarchy and so on but like it's a system we're all gonna live in and it's gonna be here for millennia and it's been around for millennia we can't just like dump it in a in there was there was a lot of things that really helped us construct the world as it is now due to the force of man to like hunting to building to being there but just the awareness of that we can do things differently and we can do things together and we're not saying about men as in gender we're saying this energy you know like we all have we all want to thrive we all want to be better like you know like but sometimes it's good to have the kindness the softness to step away from it to look at from from the outside to do many things that at the same time as you're saying or to be multiple or to be no one you know and just zoom out and that's very yeah that's very much what we're vouching for exactly and you know i feel like at least in the conversations that i've been having with a lot of people i know is like there is this sense of pessimism and it's like doomer doomer it's narrative if you if you will but then so can you come somewhere like here and it's talking about hope and activism and the things that even like individual people can do.

10:29And I think that that's such an important like political message as well. And there's something political about that because if you give up, then, you know, it becomes self-defeating. It is self-defeating, but also apart from self-defeating, it's succumbing to the other side. Yeah. They want us like the fascists, the right wings, they want us to feel fear. So if you give up, you give up to them. You're fearful, you're anxious. Of course, we're all anxious. Of course. But there's something about it. And we've been, we live in an era that we need to find that energy. We need to find the strength to go on.

11:04And this trend really comes from love, compassion, positivity, kindness. Yeah. No, that's something that really fascinates me. It's because like, even like the more and more I sort of work in music, the more I can end up becoming convinced that actually, you think that something like music couldn't necessarily change the world, but it's like the first, it's the first little domino in the line, isn't it? That's kind of how I've started to think of it. I'm like, yeah, no, it can, whether it's like a cathartic space, a political space or a space to just sort of learn and open your mind. Exactly. And there's a, of course, you're talking about the political, the cathartic, the emotional.

11:37There's also the spiritual space. They say that like music and sound is the gateway for zooming out. It's not tangible. You can't touch it. You can't, you can't see it, but you can feel it. You can feel it in your bones and sound travels so much. Sound and lights travel so much. there's so much so powerful energy so we really need to cling into them they're so powerful yeah and i i was even like pondering yesterday was like it's so beautiful that a festival like this comes uh together because of music yeah right it's music that brings the people together and then we can have conversations we can see differences we can talk about taste about culture about everything but music is a catalyst yeah and how strong is that yeah and the thing that struck me during the panel as well when we saw two women rapping in like and like native languages and stuff like that it reminds us that music really is a shared language and even if you don't necessarily understand it word for word or understand any words at all you can like you can sort of feel where somebody is coming from and you can see another window into their world exactly so you can feel the intention i'll tell you a story i'm working with two different indigenous tribes at the moment, one in Brazil and one indigenous musician from the Navajo tribes in North America.

12:51Yeah. And they exchanged songs in between them on WhatsApp. And the indigenous people in Brazil knew exactly what the tribe in North America were singing about. And it was just because of the intention, the rhythm, the energy. They had no idea about the words. And it was, I was like, oh my God, you know, like that's it. You know, you don't need to know languages. You can feel it you can sense it that is amazing it was pretty powerful yeah yeah no that's that's that's fascinating and so having like having this platform here how does it compare to like your experience the your experience in the group's experiences of being at other festivals well it's different yeah i mean this one has a soft spot you know and a story about it which is super empowering yeah i think the way they still keep it a bit like what would we call diy you know they keep it like community based they keep it some of the festivals are a little bit even hard to handle like so much sponsorship and stuff like that you know you're coming to work for a big corporation of course this one has its challenges as well there's a lot of things involved and but just the fact that's in a family farm and you know there's a whole local community is working like the whole of Somerset and of Blastonbury and Pilton and Froome they're all here and they're selling their foods it's so beautiful you know it feels like you're going to like a festival maybe how it was in medieval times or like yeah a gathering you know like a community gathering so it's it is really special yeah that yeah that's something that really sort of stuck out to me as well as I remember somebody I've honestly this is my first time here but I've gone to like a lot of different festivals some of which have been independent some of which have been run by a larger body but i remember somebody who's come here a lot who i'm actually camping with telling me that he finds it really refreshing how un-corporate it is for lack of a better term it is here compared to other festivals but surely as well it probably means that there's like more scope for like a wider range of ideas there's not that conflict there is more of that sense of freedom right yeah there is yeah yeah there's total sense of freedom and even if you see the signs they're handwritten it's kind of cute you know like you don't have that like thing um i hope they can keep going and yeah it's good it's really good it's nurturing yeah and there's all the creativity as well like obviously like from here within this space and like outside of it in the rest of the festival i feel like that actually does actually give you sort of a real it's so easy to kind of like lose faith in humanity but then when you sort of see what people are doing is maybe like the joy behind it and maybe there's like innocence behind it even like looking at a tiny tea shop I passed yesterday, something like that.

15:34There is something quite restorative about that, right? Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's also a benchmark for artists, right? Once they come here and have the experience, other people will look at them as well. So that, I felt that the first time I played here, like in 2007. And, you know, once you play Glastonbury, you can go back to your world and people are like, oh, they play Glastonbury. So you have like that kind of a seal of approval. So there's important curators and people behind it. And then they'll bring you when you're a big act again. And there will be always this kind of sense of belonging.

16:07And that's really important for music, musicians and artists. You know they belong. Because otherwise it can get pretty, pretty lonely, you know. So it's, yeah, it's good to have that. Yeah, so like community, that's generally one of the most important lessons that being involved in music in all sorts of different sort of genres and scenes and stuff. That's one of the most important things in life that it's taught me. Yeah, exactly. Something really special about, I'm really touched now because I've been here performing in electronic stages for like five or six times before but something really touching about terminal one to make space for these different voices to come in you know like to talk about migration so it's like really cool that people put an effort for that you know so yeah yeah and actually and then somewhere you can actually like imagine bigger sort of better things but I think that's like such an important thing even even like even I think I think I saw somebody walking around outside saying something about imagining a world without orders i'm like yes no let's hear more of this let's actually have this instead of responding to the situation with fear and xenophobia the sort of thing that we just sort of hear so much of in the mainstream press yeah i mean fear is the worst isn't it fear is so limiting fear and anxiety puts us down as people and when we're all fearful together then more and then it comes like it starts declining you know yeah it puts your mood very low so if you don't have communities to support each other to make everyone rise we're going to be fearful sometimes you're alone at home you start checking the news you're like oh right like yeah what can we do from here and when you come here you kind of forget it's not that you're dismissing it or wanting to forget yeah that you're really participating in something that pulls you up instead of down so we need more of that so we're to be here for that so yeah thank you so much to terminal one and to layman layton for having us getting to see terminal one was a real highlight of the festival for me least of all because it was genuinely refreshing to be in a space where immigration and the voices of immigrants were celebrated rather than demonized.

18:18And I think that made such a difference. And it spoke to quite a lot, I think, about the politics of Glastonbury. But anyway, I've got three more days of the festival. I will catch up with you again on Sunday.

19:10We're here on Sunday. hey Emma how was your energy how are you feeling I've needed some coffee I mean I always need coffee but I definitely needed a big coffee today I could be worse all things considered I think I feel better today than I did yesterday morning yesterday morning I was a bit crabby because I'd stayed out a bit late and it was starting to get light as I went to bed and so the sleep I had was maybe less of a sleep than a glorified nap um but wasn't so bad today because I decided not to make that mistake again I did stay out I did have fun but I also had a semi-sensible bedtime of 4am as opposed to 5am um but yeah I feel like I've paced myself okay but also maybe that's easier to do when it's hot because i'm not going to be running around dancing i might just be sort of nodding along trying not to die melting a bit wheezy yesterday i was very hot a little bit irritable and then i went and spent an extortionate amount on an iced coffee and i was like i need the caffeine and something cold i don't care how much this is gold leaf in it and i would have paid for it i hope to never pay as much for nice coffee as you might pay for a pint elsewhere again because that happened how has the festival compared to the coverage that you've seen previously well that's the thing like when you see on the tv it only scratches the surface because you only see one dimension of the festival which is like the standardly festival stuff whereas put it in context and you get this place that's a music festival but it's also so many other things you know obviously you don't see like the political posters everywhere and the artwork everywhere all like the little whimsical corners and stuff like that that other festivals don't have and you don't realize that it's similar but also different and also in some ways kind of hard to compare to other festivals sometimes it does feel like comparing apples and oranges just because it's so unique here it's so big there's such a huge offering of things even beyond things on the main stages so yeah it's a very it contains multitudes what are some of the political moments you have seen or haven't seen at the festival Yeah, so I think there was one political moment that I saw talked, that I've not really seen talked about as much.

21:58And that was from Amal and the Sniffers, who I absolutely love. I think Amy Taylor did a brilliant speech. It's so fucking weird. The left and the right politicians don't believe in anything at all between the two of them. They believe in nothing. I'm thinking about the people in Palestine. I'm thinking about... Yeah, and all our governments, like we're from Australia. they ain't doing jack shit I know yours ain't doing jack shit and I think about I think about schooling and I think about media and I think we don't learn nothing about colonisation, we don't learn nothing about sexual education we don't learn any of the right things we don't see any of the right things in the media and so of course most people don't know about this shit and that's what's so fucked up because they don't want us to know and they want us to shut the fuck up because if we think about Palestine then back home in Australia we think about the indigenous there's people there and we think about and we think about the fact that us as whiteys we're the fucking colonizers and that's so disgusting and it's so much to hold but that's the truth and I thought I'd share that today it was going to be something way more poetic but that's just what I said it's not perfect but I think it's better to say anything than say nothing at all right now because shit shit's going down the shit of Fast and mate, we got AI on the way.

23:17That's going to be even crazier. So buckle up, bitches. She's about to get wet. Pretty off the cuff. She said she wanted to rehearse it a little bit more, but she'd been ill, so she couldn't. But she did a really sort of brilliant, personable, sincere speech talking about Palestine, but then also zooming out a little bit to talk about colonisation, obviously as an Australian band. That's something that's obviously a really hot button issue. So she talked about the indigenous people there. She talked about AI. she dedicated their song Knifey to the trans community and she said fuck JK Rowling as well I think Jade actually did a similar thing I wasn't there for Jade's set but I think it's really cool to see what she's been doing with her chants and talking about Palestine and trans rights in a fun context but a pointed and real context then also you'll get other bands celebrating that as well on the smaller stages.

24:13Quick producer's note, this one is from Shane Kuti. I know you want to free Palestine. You want to free Congo. You want to free Sudan. You want to free Iran.

24:31There's a new one every week.

24:35Free Europe.

24:42Free Europe from right-wing extremism.

24:50Free Europe from fascism.

24:56Free Europe from racism.

25:02Free Europe from imperialism. When you do this job, as soon as you do this job, Gaza will be free. Congo will be free. Sudan will be free. Iran. Forget about us. Don't worry about it. Free Europe.

25:33like Maruja for example very pro-Palestine and they had quite a funny chant of Kirstarm as a waistband at one point which was quite entertaining Lambrini girls are always brilliant with this sort of stuff especially with the way that they called obviously for a free Palestine but to for like more like direct action they were talking about go to protest if you can write to your MP things like that and I think that's a really nice thing to encourage but zooming out a bit looking at the festival in like a broader context looking around and seeing Greenpeace's presence and the slogans they had around their stage or the artwork and the political posters even all around the toilets you know it's everywhere and it's fascinating Terminal 1 is the same it was so nice to actually see somewhere that celebrated immigration and got curious about it instead of demonizing it and i think it's actually just the tip of the iceberg there because it's so nice to be in a space like this that actually gives you a sense of hope and celebrates hope love unity in all of those forms because it's so easy to think that for lack of a better expression we're completely cooked um and pessimism and apathy and doomerism are everywhere and those are attitudes i kind of hate and i understand them but i also hate them because they become a self-fulfilling prophecy but also what are you meant to do if you don't believe anything can be better do you just you're supposed to just stay in bed and wait till the world blows up so having that actual sense of hope and trying to inspire people to sort of recalibrate and get their strength back is something that I really really appreciated and I think I actually probably needed it more than I realized and you know there are people who haven't given up and it's so nice to be reminded of that but the irony is coming on to the next bit is you know I think it's very important to preach joy as an active resistance to preach love and unity as an active resistance and i think that's really important in a way that i don't think is appreciated enough but the 1975's take on that when they headlined on friday night i found quite strange and um people who are watching this may uh i don't know they might be disappointed at the the lack of politics in this show and our forthcoming shows and probably our future shows because 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 because we and I'm not trying to be too earnest but 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 and i know that's really basic but if you are a young kid and you are inspired by like a band this band or something like that um don't aspire to like play a stage or be a certain size aspire for like this level of friendship and love in what you do and you'll never fail and i love you thank you so much because for context, Mattie Healy was basically talking about how they're not there to be political and they're there to sort of preach love and friendship.

29:15The first issue I took with that was that it is a political position, but it wasn't really framed as such. It was almost more in the sense of, oh, let's just hold hands and sing Kumbaya, like that sort of tone. it wasn't really have any fire or passion behind it it was almost more said with a shrug and it was also maybe something i found slightly cowardly about it i'm like now is the moment you're giving up politics in such a contentious time now is when you're choosing it after you had greta thunberg do an introduction on one of your albums in what was also a very politically charged but very energized moment when people first started waking up to the realization about the climate crisis and there was this great war on plastic after blue planet which was i missed that period a little bit actually then you've done that and everything else that they've done and then to give up now especially in the context of this festival as well and everything that stands for and to be on the pyramid stage and say that that did not sit with me that was strange and almost antithetical to the spirit of Glastonbury I thought and I thought it was a massive shame

30:42hello again it is Tuesday as I'm recording this I got back yesterday and my voice sounds a little bit raspy because I've been using it a lot uh a lot of it to scream to Olivia Rodrigo let's be honest I have felt a bit like a zombie today but I suppose that's part of the course for most festivals I thought my energy levels were fairly okay for most of the weekend but it was actually getting back on Monday that finished me off because the pack up is the worst bit of any festival had to wait around for a long time to try and get a bus off site it was boiling hot but I made the very very good decision to purposely buy a white Glastonbury t-shirt on Sunday so I was not traveling home wearing the black t-shirt that I had packed and I mean I thought I was going to have an amazing time and I certainly did obviously not everything is as you imagine it in your head but I mean I still managed to get pretty close I would like you to say but it wasn't particularly arduous I would have thought I thought the walking was actually pretty okay and I managed to pace myself quite well but it was also sort of interesting to me being in that sort of environment where there's a lot of music I really like that's kind of usually part of like a specific sort of subculture but then there's a lot of other things that I've watched along around that and it reminded me actually of how even though my music taste is very much grounded in a few particular genres metal, punk, alternative rock, hardcore.

32:34There's actually plenty outside of that that I also enjoy. It felt like I was engaging in a way with a lot of different parts of myself, whether it's the stuff that's very much is part of the backbone of my music taste, all things that I've listened to a lot with my family. My dad and my sister are really into the 1975 for example and I also mentioned to quite a few people throughout the week because I thought it was really cool that I was seeing Alanis Morissette two decades after my mum had done the same thing when I was small and I think that was quite an interesting thing getting to sort of see a lot of different parts of myself on the poster I'd seen I'd said a lot to my friends that I'd chosen a really good year to go.

33:24Musically, I stand by that. Logistically, maybe not so much because as you may know, Glastonbury is taking a fallow year next year. So it means that while I have had an incredible time, I'm not going to get to experience it again for another two years, which is a little bit of a shame. And so much can change in that period of time as well. I'm 24 now. by the time Glastonbury next rolls around, I'm going to be 26. My sister will be about to finish university. My best friend is getting married next year. She will be married by then, which is quite a funny thing to think about. But yeah, I don't think this is the last I will have seen of Worthy Farm.

34:14What do you think your highlight of the festival is going to be?

34:20Do you know? I've got no idea because I haven't walked into that tent yet randomly to find it. Yeah, so my favourite thing is all the things that happen to you rather than the things you plan, the things you run across like the human fish being chased by a rod, the knife thrower I saw. The absolute best thing was walking past the Astrolade Theatre on the way back one night and one afternoon and hearing this most beautiful voice. So I went in to have a look and it was Lucy Jones singing musicals and she had a deeply dedicated audience it was fantastic Sam Ryder came on and sang a duet with her from Wicked which brought tears to my eyes she did an incredible defying gravity and an ABBA medley absolute box office how do you imagine you're going to feel on Monday Knackered I think.

35:14I think I just finished uni so I think on Monday after Glace is finished as well I think finishing uni, Glace finishing, it's all gonna crash down on me possibly. I think the main feeling today was just heat exhaustion because it was about 30 degrees and it was good I was at work again and I was inside so I had the fan on all day so I was actually really lucky but it was weird coming out of work and seeing you know all along the pyramid stage that it's empty um considering how vibrant and busy it was the day before it seems kind of like a shell now it's very bizarre what do you think your highlight of the festival is going to be oh my highlight of the festival what's it going to be that's a very good question there's a band happening on Sunday night I think Sunday night is the most feral because everyone's really sad that it's almost over so I'm excited for about midnight Sunday when I finish my last shift and I get to go hang out with all the feral people oh yeah there's one more thing I wanted to say which was and I can confirm this year like every other year people went feral on the Sunday and it was so much fun everyone's just trying to scrape the last bit of fun before it's all over I saw this incredible like electric brass band this tiny tent called toad hall which is in the green futures field and it was amazing they wear these cool wooden masks and they're all beautiful and they're french and then they take off the mask and you can see how beautiful they are I got the hiccups and it was just so fun and wonderful

37:03Thank you.