By Sachin Ravikumar
GLASTONBURY, England (Reuters) – Glastonbury Festival’s main Pyramid Stage opened on Friday to the sounds of The Master Musicians of Joujouka, a trance music collective from Morocco, as tens of thousands of fans kicked off three days of music and merrymaking under a blazing English sun.
The sprawling, eclectic and world-famous festival in southwest England will feature hundreds of acts including American rockers Guns N’ Roses and British singer Elton John, whose Sunday night show will be his last UK tour performance.
Fellow headliners Arctic Monkeys’ Friday evening performance will go ahead, organisers confirmed, following doubts after frontman Alex Turner contracted laryngitis.
“He’s ok. They’re on,” organiser Emily Eavis, whose father Michael started Glastonbury Festival on his farm 53 years ago, told BBC Radio. “We were thinking about whether we should have a serious backup plan – but no, thankfully, they’re on.”
The Master Musicians of Joujouka, who also played at Glastonbury in 2011, belong to a centuries-old musical tradition with Sufi roots that gained greater attention after a collaboration with the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones in the 1960s.
Festival-goer Leslie Mills said she was most looking forward to the mystery act billed as “The Churnups” and widely believed to be the Foo Fighters as she sat on the grass sipping Diet Coke in 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) temperatures.
Asked about the opening performance from the Moroccan collective, she replied with a chuckle: “It was different. I had a little dance.”
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James)
