Boardmasters 2022, or ‘the dust bowl’, as it was affectionately referred to by some attendees thanks to the scorching heat, certainly left its mark. Five days of sand, surf, and sea were accompanied by some of the most creative, inimitable, and downright brilliant artists currently making music in the worlds of hip hop, soul, jazz, and rap - here are our highlights. 

Rapper Dreya Mac brought big, sunny tunes to match the weather early on Friday afternoon, taking a spot on the main stage to wake up the festival for its first full day of music. The heat didn’t stop her from delivering an incredibly high-energy set, and to watch her, it’s absolutely no surprise that she has a background in professional dance. It would be wrong to say that she’s a dancer-turned-rapper; rather, Dreya blends the two mediums together to create an infectious, feel-good, endlessly impressive performance along with her backing troupe. At Boardmasters, this proved to be a winning combination, which had even the most reserved festival goers dancing. 

Steam Down kept the high energy going through Friday afternoon over on the Land of Saints stage: the London-based jazz collective, founded by multi-instrumentalist Ahnansé, delivered an utterly absorbing set that blended crashing percussion and hypnotic melodies with soulful vocals. Their set was heavily rhythmic, but left room for the performers and their instruments to breathe, and allowed room for improvisation - in fact, much of their music is underpinned by it. This liberating, energetic sound went down a storm with the crowd, and it felt as though the group achieved that difficult feat of making a genuine, mutual connection with an audience through their music. 

Joy Crookes’s set on Sunday afternoon was just the thing to ease people into the evening, making the most of the sunny golden hour to give a performance that oozed style and confidence. Her songwriting weaves together elements of both the personal and the universally relatable, combined with festival-worthy singalong choruses and slick, catchy melodies - and at Boardmasters, this made for a combination that the audience couldn’t help but move to. In fact, when it came to the latter, there was little choice in the matter: after instructing the crowd to dance, Joy declared simply that ‘when I say dance, you say ‘how much hip?’. It’s fair to say that there was no objection here - it would have been a far greater challenge to stop people from moving to her music.

The vibrancy of these acts earlier in the festival was matched only by venerated hip-hop group De La Soul, who played the Land of Saints stage on Sunday evening. Although they were vying with Kings of Leon for crowds during the headline slot, the area was easily (and increasingly, as they played) packed out - both with old fans and newcomers who knew they’d stumbled onto something great. With special guest Talib Kweli joining the trio on stage, De La Soul knew exactly how to get people moving, with their trademark fusion of jazz rap and hip hop creating an ecstatic set - which was either the perfect end to Boardmasters 2022, or just the thing to set partygoers up for dancing through the night at the final afterparty of the festival. Either way, De La Soul rounded things off in style.

Words by Martha Crass