The Anthony Burgess prize nominee says Stormzy’s headline set at Glastonbury united a violent and discontented
Britain and shows that we have come a long wayBarring fallow years, there are two Glastonbury Festivals held annually. One costs £265, and is both the quintessential and the exceptional
music festival; both the apex of its category, and something its devout attendees insist is unlike all else. The other is included in your licence fee: a sprawling, hegemonic media creation visualised by the BBC.
It is this filmed, disseminated Glastonbury that has symbolic influence, not unlike the mediated image of Oxbridge in the public consciousness. A black musician headlining the festival, it could then be argued, is nearly as potent an image as black students attending Oxbridge — and after lending considerable financial muscle to the latter in 2018, the grime MC Stormzy accomplished the former on Friday 28 June 2019.