Shambala Festival
Kelmarsh Hall and Gardens
⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

SHAMBALA lives by its principles: meat-and-plastic-free, 100 per cent renewable energy, no corporate sponsors — and this year it has become the country’s first festival owned purely by its own workers, guaranteeing its ongoing independence and sustainability.

Fitting then that Friday night headliners are the country’s most notorious independent music outfit, Bob Vylan. Dropped by their agent after the furore following their “Death to the IDF” chant at 2025’s Glastonbury Festival (broadcast live on the BBC), Bob Vylan have returned to their roots as a completely self-managed band — and are thriving on it.

That chant is back tonight, of course, but nowadays they leave it to the crowd to do it by themselves. Have they been cowed? Perhaps a little, and who can blame them — as they explain from the stage, they have faced three separate police investigations over their comments (all of which predictably came to naught), alongside an onslaught in the press. As we have seen with the beautiful young professor Jason Arday, this kind of pile-on can have horrific consequences.

Their music, however, is as ferocious as ever, driving us wild with its irresistible mix of scuzzy guitar, block-rocking live beats and lyrics which don’t flinch from articulating the stress and drudgery of life under crisis capitalism, but delivered with a heavy dose of sardonic humour and defiance, and always managing to wrench some positivity out of it all.

They are teaching the youth to stand tall and proud in the face of fascist intimidation — and thank God for that.

And so too is Francesca Nadin. Francesca spent nine months imprisoned on remand for her alleged role in a direct action against Barclays Bank in protest at their financing of Elbit, the Israeli arms manufacturer (with factories in Britain) that makes 85 per cent of the drones used in Israel’s genocide. She emerged more determined than ever: “Prison is so dehumanising,” she tells the audience at the Rebel Soul tent, “it strips away everything that belongs to you as a person.”

And yet: “It is the most amazing political education that you could ever imagine.”

After coming out, she founded Prisoners for Palestine, a self-organised network of prisoners and ex-prisoners who have faced jail for their solidarity activities with Palestine. There are currently 31 activists in British jails for their Palestine activism, members of the Filton 25, the Brize Norton 6, and the MOOG 4.

Of those, the four already sentenced have been handed sentences of between five and nine years, more than double the average for the crimes of which they were convicted due to the judge’s spurious claim of a “terror link” that was never mentioned — let alone proven — during the trial.

Yet the prisoners, she says, are happy, at ease with their consciences, knowing they have done all they can to sabotage the genocide. “Despair is a luxury,” she tells us, “that we cannot afford.”

The event ends with a call to take action ourselves and to write to the prisoners to counteract the isolation, intimidation and smear tactics of the state and its media lapdogs.

Alongside the politics and solidarity, Shambala has always had a carnival atmosphere, and no one does it better than La Vespa Cougourdon Ourchestra. The 11-piece band from Occitania, playing horns made entirely from pumpkins, faces painted, and covered with beads, tassels, horns, and head-dresses are a spinning, screeching and blissfully raucous mass of energy. Wild, joyful and intense, they make the most glorious racket I’ve ever heard, an absolute must for anyone’s bucket list.

Food enough for all manner of minds, bodies and souls.

For more information see: shambalafestival.org