The magic of Glastonbury music festival
2024-06-24 12:07:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
In a classic Glastonbury move, the festival has all the old timers up in arms about how the festival is moving too far away from it's roots. This year South Korean K-pop boy band Seventeen is playing the Pyramid stage, the Friday afteroon spot.
I say this as a former cranky old timer that was complaining about how the festival was moving away from it's roots, only to discover that, actually, I hadn't truely understood what Glastonbury was all about. Yes sure it's about big rock bands, and you can enjoy it at that level, but the really cool thing about Glastonbury, the thing it's mind bendingly good at, is taking these bands that seem completely different, that would appear to be almost completely at odds with each other, and juxtaposing them in such an unnexpected way, that somehow it magically just works.
It's really difficult to explain in words. The festival is so enormous, with so many stages, so many genres and ambiences, that it quite literally feels magical, like walking across a simulacrum of the multiverse composed of the most incredible colidascope of colours, energies and people. You are constantly finding yourself in places you would never normally have gone to in your non-glasto RL, often with a glass of authentic west country pear cider in your hand, and absolutely friggin loving it.
Even the so called uncool bands seem to popup just at the right time, when you're recovering from some other concert, and you see and feel the energy of the festival flow through them, and you think to yourself, holy crap Glastonbury is amazing.
The magic of the ancient druids, mystical rituals from across the ages permeates everything like the cosmic background radiation, you see it eminating through the musicians, and you recognise it, because it's eminating through you too. You feel at one with yourself, the bands, your friends, all the people around you, as well as with the earth and entire universe.
And then it's 4am and you are deep in the magic forest, at some totally underground unannounced jungle rave thing, and the band you thought were uncool are there raving their tits off, with an assortment of people so crazily diverse you start to literally believe you are in a dream. But it's just Glasto.
Not even rain and mud can dampen the spirit, the rave continues with wellies and rain jackets, or in your tent.