Montreux Jazz Festival 2024 • Festivals • DIY Magazine

Armed with a rich history, an ongoing legacy, and helpfully positioned on the edge of one of the world’s most beautiful geographic vistas ℅ Lake Geneva, it’s not hard to see why, more than 50 years since it first began back in 1967, Montreux Jazz Festival is still thriving. Having progressively broadened its genre horizons since those first days, in the decades since, the sprawling event has programmed everyone from Adele to Zappa: a comprehensive A-Z of musical greats that counts Bowie, Prince, Nina Simone and Radiohead among its alumni. Dozens of celebrated ‘Live From Montreux’ albums have spawned from the event; an archival approach to documenting every show encourages artists to pull out all the stops to preserve something special while, for 2024, the main stage has moved outdoors, backed by passing sail boats and daily sunset golden hours. Reading and Leeds, this is not.

There’s a bucket list feeling to every show here, but there’s no one it matters to more than RAYE. Sporting a trio of flag tattoos on her arm (British, Ghanaian and Swiss), she’s already a keen rep for her heritage but tonight is a family affair. Pointing out her grandad in the audience and noting that it's his first time watching her perform, she peppers the show with heartfelt proclamations of how much it all means; “Moments like this, I just want to bask in it,” she grins. The sentiment is unequivocally mutual. Much like Amy Winehouse before her, something happens to the chemistry of the air when RAYE sings - whether elongating opener ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ with mind-blowing vocal trills, delivering an astonishing big band cover of ‘Man’s World’ or unleashing the absolutely devastating ‘Ice Cream Man’ and its raw tale of industry sexual harassment, she visibly lives every note.

Popping up later that night on the Jam Sessions stage for an impromptu Round Two, RAYE’s willingness to throw herself in feels indicative of the festival’s true spirit. While Friday night sees Jungle headline the main stage in a spectacle of fiery lights and falsetto harmonies, their finely-honed niche of funk-tinged alternative dance an exercise in precision and polish, over in the side rooms there’s all sorts of loose-limbed fun to be had, from vinyl listening sessions to DJs to spontaneous team-ups. Within an hour, the Jam room - a constantly rotating set of musicians where genre and approach can turn on a dime - plays host to the joyful West African rhythms of a kora player, some Parisian-sounding lounge piano and, inexplicably, a vocalist who decides to conclude his set by doing handstands. Truly, you never know what you’re going to get.

On the contrary, Thursday headliner Janelle Monáe delivers a show that’s in turns one of the most meticulously crafted stage turns on the circuit and total giddy chaos. Presented in chapters that see Monáe changing costumes and personas for each, she’s floral clad and feminine at the start, “summoning the spirits” of classic Montreux performers on ‘Champagne Shit’ before a section entitled ‘(T)high Vibrations’ sees her invite a host of fans on stage for an extended, brilliantly messy twerk through ‘Paid In Pleasure’. Returning for a dance break that’s part Michael Jackson, part Bob Fosse as she slowly drip-feeds the beginning of ‘Make Me Feel’, she ends by “honouring [her] hero” Prince with an encore of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’. A pocket-sized whirlwind of sex positivity, musical innovation and flamboyant spectacle, Monáe is surely his spiritual successor.

Having welcomed, over its 16 days, a vast array of legends both classic and future, it’s fitting that the festival ends its 2024 stretch in similarly eclectic fashion. Supporting Jungle on Montreux’s penultimate night, former Mercury Prize winner Michael Kiwanuka provides a balmy aural equivalent to the beatific lakeside scene behind him. Backed by tender visuals of a young Black family, going about domestic life and caring for their baby, from an early ‘You Ain’t The Problem’ to breakthrough single ‘Home Again’ that first introduced him to the world, the set is one to bathe in. Fast forward 24 hours, however, and we’re rewound back fully to the ‘80s with a final night duo of Soft Cell and Duran Duran. Still as gloriously camp as ever, Simon Le Bon and his band offer up a smorgasbord of big pop hits, packaged in silver leather trousers and space-age visuals. If there’s a more fitting way to end a waterside extravaganza than with the yacht holiday pomp of ‘Rio’ then we don’t want to hear it.

Diverse, comprehensive and full of world class talent, Montreux Jazz Festival’s final three days distil the essence of an event that’s all that and more: 50 years into its tenure, long may it continue.