In a season where inner-city festivals have been under increased scrutiny for their effect on London’s parks and problematic corporate ownership, the fiercely independent GALA Festival celebrated 10 years in the game at their spiritual home of Peckham Rye Park this May. We headed down to South-East London to remind ourselves why GALA remains one of the UK’s finest festivals.
On our arrival to Peckham Rye Park stories of the previous day were hanging in the air – the Friday had seen rare appearances from stalwarts Moodymann and Floating Points, as well as Theo Parrish, which we were particularly envious of, the latter having played a full 8 hour set from open to close. But Saturday held much promise too, with a more techno focused bill looking to raise pulses all day.
We began with Hessle Audio mainstay, Pearson Sound, who pumped out comforting, satisfying basslines under funky house and broken beat rhythms to a packed out 1908 tent all afternoon. The 1908 set up perhaps represents GALA best, its centralised booth with 360 degree surround sound typifying the no-messing-around sound-system sentiment felt across the site. GALA’s other stages – despite being more traditional face-on set ups – have never fallen short, mostly thanks to the steep inclines of Peckham Rye Park giving great sound coverage. But 1908 was particularly busy all day, and that kind of club-level audio is on its way to becoming an expected standard at festivals – this stage shone through as the most chest throbbing by far.
1908’s chunky sound was unfortunately situated right next to Floating Points’ new Sunflower sound-system – a thoroughly jaw-dropping vision for hi-fidelity audio on a grand scale – despite substantial sound proofing around the tent, the bleed from next door was impossible to ignore. Nevertheless, Mafalda, Seiji Ono and Theo Terev strode through an emphatic b-3-b of street-soul and r’n’b before a surprise set from Gilles Peterson, who seemed to have his mind set on putting the rig through its paces with delicate jazz, Sylvia Striplin’s ‘You Can’t Turn Me Away’ and a recording of an American man speaking about how British sound-boys are the best around – needless to say this didn’t really keep the crowd in. Later on we caught some of Floating Points’ jubilant closing set. He was in an uncharacteristically hit-dropping mood, pumping out classics like Aretha Franklin’s ‘Jump to It’, Ajukaja’s ‘Benga Benga’ and Maurice Fulton’s ’Where’s Jason’s K’ to a full tent. The rig’s 4x4m high stacks, hanging tweeters, bespoke mixer and army of sound engineers – complete with what looks like S.A.S. level analysis equipment – is nothing short of groundbreaking and will no doubt impress for years to come.
Elsewhere the main stage (’JOY’) provided huge crowds with cerebral house and techno in the shape of KiNK’s live set, Ben UFO and a climactic closing set from Avalon Emerson, who took punters home with her trademark blend of euphoric breaks, techno and tastefully pop-y cuts. On the iconic Patio stage, DJ Fart in the Club revelled in the sunshine with some blissed out deep house and deeply funky squelchy acid, before Sweely took the crowd through an hour of his productions on hardware, including 2023 jazzy number, ‘The Music Feels Good’.
We never made it to the undoubtedly sweaty Pleasure Dome or Cornerstone, both tents had small queues to get in all day and with this being our 4th GALA review we had other priorities – namely to get back to 1908, where we caught the final few deep house rollers from Richard Akingbehin’s – before Timedance founder Batu took the crowd on a trip through the more house and techno-ey corners of his tastes, twisting and turning the energy like a well oiled screw.
GALA’s uniqueness felt more apparent than ever this year. The chaos and near cancellation of all of Broadwick Live’s events raised all sorts of questions over how things should be done at London’s festivals. The backlash against their corporate owners, KKR and its funding of Israel did not help their case in claiming to be a positive operation, and while their battle with Lambeth Council involved responding to a small minority of angry locals, you can’t help but feel like they had a point in requesting that events are done on a smaller scale and with the local community more in mind.
While it’s exciting to have enormous artists playing to 15,000 people down the road, – or even pivotal, in the case of Kneecap’s recent headline set at Wide Awake Festival – it is usually only made possible by corporate funding, which is a big shame at the very least, and in the case of KKR, a cause for serious concern.
GALA’s complete independence from corporate ownership is what makes it so special – it can’t be cheap to set up the space themselves every year, but this avoids the conveyer belt, one-size-fits-all feeling of other sites, where you can’t move for enormous, empty advertising structures sponsored by yet more corporations. Can we really defend taking over our parks for so long each summer, when the whole operation must be propped up by such meaningless fodder, vastly increasing the site size and set up times?
A recent petition showed that 81% of Londoners think paid-for festivals are good for the community, but this will surely decrease as the merry-go-round grows more and more cartoonish. Festivals are struggling more than ever. They will no doubt need much more protection and funding from the government before long – and it’s the independent ones that will need the most help, if they don’t want to have to get “named after a bitcoin” just to survive.
Independence means that any and all profits made are fed straight back to the right places, rather than lining the pockets of ‘the man’, who as ever, can rarely be trusted. This is surely better for everyone – local businesses, artists, the customer, and the enemies of corporations, of which there are many.
And one thing’s for sure, if political protest does become impossible at corporate events – which is an alarmingly likely prospect at this rate – it will certainly continue at independent festivals. A memory of GALA 2023 comes to mind – Gilles Peterson playing ‘God Save the Queen’ by the Sex Pistols to a packed out tent, on Coronation weekend…
GALA Festival will return to Peckham Rye Park in 2026. Tickets available soon.
