Meltdown Festival

The Southbank has been throwing its own highbrow, multi-day music festival since 1993, and this time round Grace Jones is taking the reins as curator. The singer, actress and style icon was due to curate 2020’s festival, however, due to the global pandemic, the event has been rescheduled to June 2021. In some good news, every act due to play this year has been rebooked for 2021 and thanks to the fact that Jones’ is a supremely well connected and musically omnivorous legend, the line-up is pretty spectacular. Expect big names on the bill, including Solange, Peaches and Skunk Anansie (who are fronted by recent ‘The Masked Singer’ wild card Skin) all take pride of place on the line-up. Jones has saluted her reggae roots by booking the legendary Lee Scratch Perry, himself a former Meltdown curator, who will be performing with dub producer Adrian Howells, and ‘The Harder They Come’ icon Jimmy Cliff. Her Meltdown also boasts a strong African presence courtesy of Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal and revered Malian musician and women’s rights campaigner Oumou Sangaré, plus two sets from much-loved South African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.