Born & Bred Festival 2015
Like the name suggests, this is a London Festival showcasing some of the biggest artists who have shaped the underground music scene. Now, while it had some steep competition from Field Day (held in Victoria Park on the same day, 6th June) as well as Wildlife and Parklife festival, it is safe to say Haggerston Park by far held the best festival that weekend, championing the finest talents the UK has graced us with.
On the day we had four stages brought to us by Just Jam, Wavey Garms, Swamp 81 as well as the main stage showcasing the best garage, grime, old school jungle and dnb the UK has to offer. Born & Bred is one of five festivals including Found and 51st state festival.
The day kicked off reasonably early at 11am on Saturday which with my love for naps was a tad too early resulting in us missing The Square who were first up to test the waters and get the crowd hyped.
We arrived just in time to catch a bit of Benton after being overly felt up by security among the other entrants to the festival. We then nipped into the Wavey garms tent just in time for a little bit of Dj Luck and MC Neat followed swiftly by Artful Dodger, talk about old skl garage overload- it was phenomenal!
While on the main stage The Heatwave were preparing us all for Notting hill Carnival bringing us the best dancehall and bashment vibes including songs from the legendary Beenie Man; accompanied by the beautiful sunshine it was almost like we were being transported to Jamaica.
The most energising tent was definitely the Just Jam tent which was our stage of choice for the majority of the rest of the day as we are huge grime fans. We caught sets from Spyro & Flirta D, Newham Generals and the amazing Logan Sama who was by far the highlight of the day.
Of course having experienced quite a few festivals we all know that things rarely start on time, however Wiley was nowhere to be seen at 20:15 so Zinc who had previously done one of the sickest jungle sets I’d ever heard stayed on and did an extended set which I thoroughly enjoyed skanking out to.
Unfortunately by quarter to 9 Wiley still hadn’t appeared so took the conscious decision to leave the festival; just our luck that he appears for the last seven minutes of his set and we listen, from the perimeters of the park, to him performing songs like ‘wearing my rolex’, ‘chasing the art’ and ends on Even though Wiley was a slightly controversial headliner as he is known for ‘not turning up’ the short time he was on he absolutely smashed it.
Born & Bred is probably one of the most urban festivals you will get and it definitely has given the other London festivals a run for their money. So much so that I already can’t wait for next year to see what other tricks they can pull out of their sleeves. Born & Bred-
Photos by Marc Sethi