GLASTONBURY, England — Thousands of people flocked to Worthy Farm in southwest England on Wednesday as the Glastonbury Music Festival kicked off, with hundreds of performers including Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Shania Twain set to mesmerize fans.
The festival, for which tickets sold out minutes before its schedule was announced, will conclude on Sunday with R&B singer SZA performing hits such as “Kill Bill” and “The Weekend” on the main Pyramid stage.
This year’s edition will also feature Afrobeats sensation Burna Boy, rapper Little Simz, American electro-rock group LCD Soundsystem, English singer PJ Harvey and K-pop group Seventeen, making it one of Glastonbury’s least rock-heavy line-ups in recent years.
Sunny weather greeted fans who arrived at Worthy Farm armed with backpacks and camping equipment.
James Trusson, 30, a sound engineer from Somerset, who queued overnight to be one of the first to arrive, said he had been coming to Glastonbury for 11 years and would keep coming back because there was something going on in every area.
“It’s a magic you don’t get at any other festival,” he said. “There’s no better feeling than this. It’s magical.”
The festival, popularly known as Glasto, was founded in 1970 by dairy farmer Michael Eavis and began a day after the death of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix. Artists performed to 1,500 people who bought £1 tickets, which included free milk from the farm.
Over 50 years later, and currently with a capacity of over 200,000 people, the site becomes a colourful and sometimes muddy mini-city of tents for five days in June almost every year.
This year fans spent £355 on tickets, which sold out in less than an hour in November.
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