Review: Green Man Festival 2024
Feet attire for the morning walk to the festival loo. (Photo courtesy of Jane Williams.)
After much persuasion from friends, this past week I broke my festival duck (apparently Edinburgh doesn’t count) by attending Green Man, located in the stunning Bannau Brycheiniog National Park in Wales.
A week-long Settler’s Pass meant that we could camp and explore the area until the festival proper opened on the Thursday. This offered a gradual introduction to festival life, where children are transported in what appear to be smaller versions of chuck wagons from a John Ford western, and all facets of your regular life are slowly erased and normality becomes an early morning walk to a long-drop composter toilet, dressed in woolly socks, sandals and a poncho.
I’m not now going to be one of those festival bores, who drones on and on about the acts they saw. I’ll rephrase that. I will now be one of those festival bores, who …
Highlights include the joyful crowd-pleasing energetic jazz of Ezra Collective; Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales prowling the stage; the desert blues of Tinariwen; the unbelievably talented singer/song-writer Johnny Flynn; and the deliciously inventive set of performance artists Mermaid Chunky, featuring a giant owl.
Also, what a privilege to witness the magnificent hissy-fit from singer Jim Reid during The Jesus and Mary Chain performance.
The Jesus and Mary Chain, Green Man Far Out Stage, Friday 16 August 2024, before the 'toys and pram' moment. (Photo courtesy of Julian Cooper)
But as I figured there is more to Green Man than just the music. A well-curated cinema programme, including a conversation with Samantha Morton (sadly, her music performance was cancelled due to illness in her band) and a film quiz*; spoken word and comedy; a fun science park; numerous workshops for all ages and more.
I have produced and directed many events, but nowhere near this scale and so I am not surprised when organisers describe the stress of creating Green Man.
At the centre of it all is the Green Man himself, a giant sculpture standing proud in the middle of the site. At midnight on the closing night, the figure is set alight, with an accompanying firework display that bring out the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from all of us.
The Green Man. (Photo courtesy of Julian Cooper)
This ritual enacted ‘neath a glowing supermoon is preceded by a visit from Little Amal, the 12ft puppet of a Syrian refugee child, who, like us in the days before, places a wish in the Green Man’s boughs. She then moves away, with a final bow to the forest being, in respect of the sacrifice he is about to make for us all.
It is a beautiful performative act, reminiscent of the giant storytelling I saw in Liverpool in 2018 with the amazing creations from Royal de Luxe.
Little Amal greeting Green Man festival-goers during the day. (Photo courtesy of Julian Cooper)
But like the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury, despite the five stars, The Guardian’s review of Green Man 2024 mainly concentrates on the music of the main stage. There is so much more going on, particularly for Green Man with its obvious passion for working with younger people and rising talent through the Green Man Trust. This should be acknowledged wider.
Muireann Bradley on Green Man Mountain Stage, Sunday 18 August 2024. (Photo courtesy of Julian Cooper)
Young people seem to be the bedrock of Green Man. Look at 17 year old Muireann Bradley greeting the tired and hungover on Sunday morning from the Mountain Stage, with a virtuoso blues set; or the exhilarating and raucous 52 young musicians of Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble squeezed on to the small stage of Chai Wallahs, a space dedicated to new talent.
They finished just before midnight on Sunday, followed by the ritualistic burning. I can’t think of anything finer for the Green Man to hear before he started looking nervously at that bloke coming towards him with a box of Swan Vestas.
In the comedy tent, British-Sikh comedian Damon Bamrah quips, “Green Man? More like White Man Festival.” The lack of colour amongst festival-goers is striking, as I saw my nice, white, middle-class, liberalism reflected back at me from nearly everyone else.
It’s an issue that needs to be addressed, but I hope that Green Man can receive wider coverage of its role in nurturing young talent, from which a wider and more diverse pool of both artists and festival-goers can develop.
Now, back to the next load of washing.
*38 out of 55 since you ask. Who knew that Ken Loach had taken the McDonald’s 30 pieces of silver?
