Kae Tempest

Mostly my teaching shifts are 3½ hours a day this year, much more manageable than last year's 4¾ hours. So I had time for lunch and a rest before going to hear Burning Spear on the Pyramid stage. We found a little space under the tree a long way back from the stage and flopped. I wonder what it feels like for the performers having sluggish audiences.

Next up, Vieux Farka Toure on West Holts. No shade. Enough energy at least to sway to his Malian music, if not to dance.

After a wander past various stages through late afternoon, sunset and early evening,  I caught up with some of the others at a really fun gig by Maribou State at West Holts - danceable as it was a little cooler.

I left to make sure I was right at the front for Kae Tempest at Shangri-La. (After midnight, but still before bed, so it counts as today.) 

Even so, on my way I hovered at the 'burning' Meatrack that I blipped a year ago. I'm still in awe of its use of lights and theatre smoke.

On to Shangri-La. I've managed to get to only one Kae Tempest gig since I was blown away by the wordmagic of my very first one in a leaky-roofed, disused boot factory in East Oxford (in December 2011, just before I started Blip, otherwise there'd be a picture)*. Since then Kae's venues have got a lot bigger. Tonight's gig was an elated celebration of transformation that carried us all along in its utter joy. Such a talent.


*I wasn't the only one. This is a review of that show written by Dan Holloway and lightly edited by me: 'This month’s headliner was Kae Tempest ... Having watched pretty much every clip of his mesmerising poetry on YouTube, he was the reason I walked half an hour through rain and gales to The Old Boot Factory, a deliciously scuzzy shell of a warehouse venue replete with outside loo, buckets to catch drops from the leaking roof, and a door with no catch ... His Teflon-fluid delivery served up rhymes that had depths within their depths within their depths. But whilst the word play and rhythm was exceptional, and the erudition beyond anything you’ll find on the pages of Faber, what set him apart was his desperate, soul-wrenching passion. The audience felt every word of his world with him. And it’s a world that embraces a glorious panorama of humanity, from awkwardness to despair to frustration to joy. He belongs, like the very best hip hop - and unlike so much superficial, slick, performance poetry - in the ecstatic spiritual lineage of Ginsberg and St John of the Cross. He is one of the UK’s most precious gems. Do anything you can to see him.'