Glastonbury is one of the world’s most famous music festivals, and certainly the largest one in Britain. It is held almost annually on a 1,500-acre farm near Somerset and features some of the world’s biggest bands.

This year, over 200,000 people attended the event, which even included Royalty among the festival’s attendees.

While people were accustomed to hearing some of the world’s largest bands, including Coldplay and SZA, it appears that this year’s event included a few old Christian songs. This was part of a music sing-along, featuring James Partridge, Premier Christian News reports.

Partridge is a popular music teacher and British performer and during his performance, he led the festival goers in songs that many of them sang during their school assemblies, years ago including:

• He’s got the whole world in his hands,
• This little light of mine,
• Fill this land with the Father’s glory,
• Shine Jesus shine, and
• Oil in my lamp.

As one person commented, “Oh my… Primary school bangers live is an absolute Glastonbury highlight. Thanks, James Partridge. Singing ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ with a few hundred other people will stay with me as a core Glasto memory forever.”

In the videos at the end of this article, you can watch people joining Partridge in the singalongs.

Fallow years

The Glastonbury Festival is not held every five years in what is referred to as fallow years to give the land and the community a rest. The last official fallow year was 2018 and then because of COVID, 2020 and 2021 were also designated as Fallow years.

This is similar to a requirement of the Biblical Law. When the Hebrews entered the Promised Land, they were told to rest the land (leave it fallow) every seven years, when they would not grow crops giving the land a chance to recover (Exodus 23:11).

In fact, when God judged Israel and sent them into captivity under Babylon, the length of their captivity was determined by the number of years they did not provide a fallow rest for the land (490 years divided by seven) resulting in a 70-year captivity (see 2 Chronicles 36:21 and Jeremiah 25:11).