Arthur Greene
Hip-hop giant Kendrick Lamar closed his headline set at Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK with a powerful plea for women’s rights.
Lamar’s performance had been billed as the finale to the long-awaited return of Glastonbury, the world’s biggest music festival, after a three-year Covid hiatus.
The issue of women’s rights was unexpectedly a prominent theme across the festival, as news emerged on Friday that the US Supreme Court had voted to rescind Roe Vs Wade. The historic 1973 ruling protected American women’s rights to have an abortion. The law change has paved the way for the country’s conservative states to outlaw abortions, putting millions of women’s lives at risk.
As the music died out on Lamar’s last song, “Saviour”, on Sunday evening, the lauded US rapper burst into a heartfelt speech.
“Godspeed for women’s rights. They judge you, they judge Christ,” he repeated to a cheering and emotional crowd of tens of thousands of people.
Lamar, wearing a crown of thorns and a white shirt soaked with fake blood, then stormed off the stage, leaving his troupe of static backup dancers who had surrounded him onstage.
He was not the only musician performing at Glastonbury to use their position to call out the US’s backtracking on abortion rights. Billie Eilish, the festival’s youngest ever headline act at the age of 20, stopped her set midway to shine her spotlight onto the issue.
“It’s a dark day for women in the US,” she told the crowd.
Other performances at the festival which have grabbed headlines include Paul McCartney, who belted out Beatles classics for almost three hours in a set that has been hailed as “phenomenal”.
The 80-year-old was joined on stage by two other rock legends, Bruce Springsteen, 72, and Dave Grohl, 53, of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana.
While these veterans of mainstream music hogged most of the international limelight, Nigerian superstar Burna Boy quietly pulled off the performance of the weekend. To a backdrop of jaw dropping pyrotechnics, the Afrobeats artist performed rock renditions of his songs – in line with the traditional genre of Glastonbury.
Video source: @ComplexMusic
