The Diamond Jubilee Concert

There was dancing, there were flags and there was a whole lot of music. I’d call the Diamond Jubilee concert a success then!

Speaking again from the ‘youth’ perspective, there’s a lot of negativity and in particular, a lot of apathy that comes along with the subject of the royal family. But it was pretty difficult to be apathetic this weekend with the amount of events happening. I’m a student, I like free things and I like events. So therefore the highlight of my jubilee celebrations had to be the concert.

With over 1million extra visitors to the city this weekend, myself and a group of friends braved Hyde Park and set up camp in front of one of the enormous screens showing the events on stage outside Buckingham Palace. The organisation of the whole event still amazes me. It had been set up like a mini festival, port-a-loos and all.

It isn’t often you would see acts like Stevie Wonder, Tom Jones and Paul McCartney on the same set list let alone on the same stage, so I count myself lucky to have been a part of it. I could have stayed at home and watched it on TV yes, but where’s the fun in that? There’s an amazing feeling being at a live event that you just can’t feel through a television. No, not all of the acts were to my taste, but by the end of the concert with the palace lit up and the Union Jack visible at every single angle, it all got a little bit emotional.

I love the fact that amid all of the bunting and street parties, the thing we have chosen to represent the spirit of the jubilee is a song. If we leave aside critical evaluations of the music itself and focus on the intention of the work then it shows how important music is to us all that we would invest so much time, money and effort into creating it. Events like this make me proud to call myself a musician and I think they serve as an inspiration and even as a motivator to pick up an instrument and see where it takes you.

It clearly isn’t just me who feels this way, you could ask any of the thousands and thousands of people there and you would get consistently enthusiastic responses. To my left were elderly couples, to my right were families with small children and right in front of me was a group of very excited teenagers wearing Prince Phillip and Harry masks. So you can be as apathetic or critical about the jubilee as you want, but I enjoy being offered musical opportunities where I can and had a pretty fun time dancing whilst I was at it.

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