Oya Festival 2016: Kamasi Washington, Christine and the Queens and Anderson .Paak perform at a jewel of an event
Festival-goers found an impressive billing of some of the most current and influential acts from around the world
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Your support makes all the difference.In comparison to many UK festivals, which often focus on a particular mood or sound, Oya Festival in Europe seems to have accepted the notion that with music now so accessible thanks to streaming sites - listeners’ tastes are becoming more and more wide-ranging, often with a flagrant disregard for genre.
So as well as a veritable smorgasbord (it’s ‘koldtbord’ in Norwegian) of homegrown artists, festival-goers are also able to find an impressive billing of some of the most current and influential acts from the US and the rest of Europe.
Along with headline favourites PJ Harvey, New Order, Grace Jones, Jamie xx and Foals, there are promising Norwegian acts like Dagny, Aurora, and SLØTFACE, along with some of the best talent from the UK grime scene and US hip hop.
On Wednesday, Christine and the Queens perform an early afternoon set; delighting with some phenomenal choreography and frontwoman Héloïse Letissier’s clear, strong voice. She plays the clown onstage, making quips about her eccentricities, and telling touching stories about moments in her life that inspired her music.
Over at the Hagen stage, Skepta has the crowd whipped into a frenzy with ‘That's Not Me’ and ‘Shutdown’ off 2016’s Konnichiwa, the latter with its sneering, blatant derision for authority; he is utterly fearless.
Around Oslo, multiple venues are hosting other acts once the main stages have gone quiet. American noise rock band Lightning Bolt perform in Grünerløkka - a defiantly gratified area strongly reminiscent of London’s Shoreditch.
Brian Chippendale proves to be an absolute demon on the drums; combined with the ferocity of Brian Gibson on bass the duo manage to blow a speaker and cause a [very] temporary lull. People emerge blinking from the venue after the set, holding their hands to their ears as if to check that their hearing is still intact.
By Thursday morning a fine mist is pouring from sleet-grey skies but festival-goers continue to trudge around the muddy grounds in their masses. Gundelach, a fantastic young Norwegian DJ who produces country-style guitar riffs and sings in a surprising, beautiful falsetto, performs under the shelter of the Sirkus tent.
Despite the promotion ahead of the festival it’s still impressive to walk around and see just how hard Norway is trying to promote green living. All the (expensive) food being sold is locally sourced - some stalls actually use edible plates - and kids (or cheeky adults) can earn a krone for every plastic cup they pick up from the churned-up ground. Oslo is practically vampiric when it comes to draining you of cash, so they need every penny they can get.
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Venturing outside is only worth it once Thundercat begins.
Spellbindingly talented, his earnest, emotional vocal work strikes home on ‘Heartbreaks + Setbacks’ before that undiluted groove on ‘Oh Sheit it’s X’, and ‘Them Changes’.
Stormzy switches up the atmosphere with a riotous set that features fearsome renditions of ‘Know Me From’ and ‘Shut Up’.
Mosh pits open and close up again; as people are seen running towards PJ Harvey’s set, Stormzy’s audience remain fixated, and only move on once he is definitely, absolutely not coming back onstage.
By Friday, Oslo is bathed in glorious sunshine again so of course everyone heads into darkness for a set by DJ EZ. He seems to baffle the Norwegians somewhat by dropping in a sample of Craig David’s ‘Rewind’ - or perhaps their bemusement had something to do with the overenthusiastic British reaction - they clearly enjoy it either way.
Meanwhile Section Boyz might as well have pulled up to Oya in a red double decker bus; subtlety is hardly their strong suit but that swagger is pure London.
With things winding down there's an unspoken need for one last party. Whitney, who don’t really live up to the obscene hype surrounding them, play what is now being referred to as the grime stage [Hagen], and their presence (for this writer) feels like an unwelcome interval for the sheer, unbridled energy that has been flowing from it since day one of the festival.
Frontman Max Kakacek’s vocals sound a little flat and his limited ability on the drums fails to justify his playing them while singing at the same time.
Introducing one track as “a reggae song about love” doesn’t endear them to this writer; nor a Bob Dylan classic (aren’t they all?) that they manage to make sound like their own. Hint: that’s not a good thing.
Out of all the young bands playing nostalgia-fuelled, twanging guitar riffs [the guitarist is actually decent] and drawing on Americana; Whitney feels most like pastiche - to the point that they actually have a song called ‘Golden Days’.
Kamasi Washington, on the other hand, is mesmerising as he is talented; one of those artists who prompts a few ‘I’m not crying there’s just something in my eye’ tears as you watch him play the sax in a sun-drenched field, and that’s even before touring vocalist Patrice Quinn opens her mouth.
Soon after, Anderson .Paak bounds onto the stage with his band the Free Nationals like a spinning top that never stops, performing tracks from 2014’s Venice and his latest release: the 2016 opus Malibu.
Successfully transitioning from ferocious energy on his KAYTRANADA collaboration ‘GLOWED UP’ and the incendiary ‘Drugs’ to a sensuousness that recalls D’Angelo on ‘The Bird’ and ‘The Waters’; he hops onto the drums at various intervals and invites Thundercat on for a solo.
.Paak’s enthusiasm is infectious - without a doubt the most energetic act to appear in the week - but he also clearly senses that the context of his music is somewhat lost on his audience [“so many white people,” he observes with a slightly perplexed grin. Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ rings out as he charges back off the stage; a stark reminder of the protests against police violence taking place around the US.
Oslo is a jewel of a festival nestled near the centre of Norway’s capital and something, particularly UK city festivals, to aspire to match. With rather uninventive lineups marring the usually excellent Field Day, Sound City and No. 6, hopefully we’ll see some competitiveness arise next year.
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