Coldplay welcomed Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna on stage for their historic Glastonbury 2024 headline slot.
The British band, led by Chris Martin, played the Pyramid Stage on Saturday (29 June), one night after Dua Lipa impressed crowds with her very own headline set – despite a sound issue with the BBC broadcast.
On Saturday (29 June), with their fifth Glastonbury headline slot that The Independent called a “spectacle of a lifetime”, the band become the act to have headlined the most number of times, and invited several guests to join them, including Little Simz, Laura Mvula and Back to the Future star Michael J Fox.
One singer who joined Martin and his bandmates for an extended period of time was Elyanna, an experimental pop star known for merging Arabic music with Latin rhythms.
Elyanna performed Coldplay’s 2019 song “Arabesque” alongside Femi Kuti as well as “We Pray”, a new collaboration between the band, Little Simz and Burna Boy.
The 22-year-old singer, who shot to fame aged 15, is the daughter of a Palestinian poet, whose father is a Palestinian poet and singer and whose mother is a pianist from Chile.
Elyanna moved to San Diego, California in 2017 to pursue her musical career, and gained fame after posting covers on her Instagram page. She was eventually discovered by by Grammy-winner Nasri Atweh.
The singer, who recently performed a sell-out show in London venue KOKO, is signed to Universal Arabic Music – and made history as the first artist to sing in Arabic on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She did so while wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh headscarf.
In 2023, Elyanna released a song dedicated to Palestine, titled “Olive Branch”. She first shared the track on Instagram with the caption: “In the past few days I’ve been struggling with my emotions to put them into words. It’s been hard to witness everything that has unfolded I’m worried and I’m praying for my family, friends, and my people back home.”
Towards the end of Coldplay’s headline set, Chris Martin called for unity at “what could be perceived to be a very divided time on Earth”.
Speaking to the crowd, he said: “Thank you for giving us and me restored faith that most humans can gather together very peacefully with all different flags, all different colours, all different genders, sexualities, ages, everything, and just sing and have a good time and ice cream, there’s no fighting, nothing like that.
“So thank you for being inspiring to us, and hopefully we’re sending all this out into the world all together as a beacon of togetherness in a time when it might seem like that’s impossible, you just proved that it is, so that’s amazing, thank you.”
