They used to mean crusties, hippies, all-male lineups, near riots and burning toilets. Now, from Dorset to Inverness, there’s a festival – and a costume – for everyone. What caused this boom? And is there a dark side?
It’s 7pm on the first day of Gala festival in Peckham Rye park and dry ice drifts into the trees as grime MC Novelist, born just miles away, raps about a south London bus. “Four eight four! Going on raw on the 484,” he spits with a grin, bouncing like the sweaty moshpit in front of him. There are already hands in the air for this hyperlocal elegy when the DJ teases the next instrumental, Skream’s unmistakable Midnight Request Line – dubstep’s greatest ever anthem.
Gala is one of the first festivals of the now overflowing British summer season. That same weekend, Black Water County kicked off the Cursus cider and music festival in Dorset, Fatboy Slim headlined the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Sunderland, and scores more fizzed into action, from Elderflower Fields in East Sussex to Devauden in south Wales, Slam Dunk in Hertfordshire, Dot to Dot in Nottingham, as well as Sidmouth jazz and blues festival and Chippenham folk festival.
