Since triumphing in the 2024 edition of Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition, fiercely independent rapper JayaHadADream’s career has taken flight. Having followed that victory by releasing her Redemption Songs EP and performing at a multitude of high-profile festivals, the artist, real name Jaya Gordon-Moore, tells M: ‘I was already building my confidence, but the Glastonbury win really made me feel unstoppable. If you reach for something, you actually can get it.’
An inspired moment of proactivity led Jaya to apply for the competition in the first place. ‘At the end of last year, I started relentlessly looking for opportunities because music was becoming a full-time thing for me. I decided to go in for the Emerging Talent Competition and managed to get longlisted. I was then shortlisted for the final eight, which was so incredible and surreal in itself.’
In essence, no harm can come from exploring opportunities like these — particularly when it comes to potentially life-changing openings like the Emerging Talent Competition, whose winner receives a coveted main stage slot at Glastonbury along with a £5,000 talent development fund from PRS Foundation.
‘That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned: I didn’t realise how many things you could apply for as an artist before this,’ she says. ‘This summer I ended up playing at Boomtown and Reading and Leeds. Neither of those doors would’ve been opened for me if it wasn’t for Glastonbury.’
'People often try to split hip hop apart from real art.'
Jaya says that the competition’s ethos of embracing musical diversity and inclusivity has ultimately helped her break through as a female rapper.
‘Even though I believe in hip hop, sometimes you feel rejected as a female rapper in that genre,’ she explains. ‘People often try to split hip hop apart from real art, and even rappers themselves will downplay their art. It was [therefore] really cool just to see it up on that platform and in the limelight. To be seen by the Eavis family and all the different judges and organisations? That meant a lot.’
Casting back to the moment that she was announced as the latest winner of the Emerging Talent Competition inside the nervy and hot confines of Pilton’s Working Men’s Club, Jaya says the moment was goosebump inducing.
‘I started crying, and I remember thinking, “Whatever happens after this is a bonus”,’ she recalls. ‘I apply a lot of pressure on myself, but I’m very at peace with where things are now going because that was an amazing moment and I’ll always have it.
‘My nan was the first person I called after winning. She was the person who bought me my first microphone and really believed in me; she bought me Logic for my laptop for my 16th birthday so I could record my music. It was so emotional calling her when we were driving back to our accommodation. That meant a lot to me'.
'WINNING GLASTONBURY’S EMERGING TALENT COMPETITION MADE ME FEEL UNSTOPPABLE’
After winning the competition, Jaya then had the opportunity to perform on Glastonbury’s Woodsies stage. ‘It really gave me so
much insight into how festivals work and what you need to be focusing on to prepare yourself,’ she says. ‘Performing at Glastonbury has made me think about my whole band set-up, as well as things like lighting and the logistics of a major festival. It was really cool to see behind that curtain.
‘Nobody treated me like the Emerging Talent winner, either. They treated me like they would James Blake or Kneecap, and so I felt really special because the staff were really supportive.’
So what was it actually like to step out on to a stage as iconic as Glastonbury’s Woodsies? ‘I’m from a working-class background where we had free school meals, so to even go to a festival like Glastonbury was amazing because it’s been on my bucket list for so long. It was all funded as well, so I didn’t need to worry about the finances because the PRS Foundation grant really helped, enabling me to pay my band which is really important.
‘I got to perform a song which features some bars about quitting my day job and making it to Glastonbury, which was a nice full-circle moment.’
As well as rubbing shoulders with the likes of Woodsies headliner James Blake (‘I’m a massive fan, but he really recognised me as an artist’), Jaya was able to catch Little Simz’s set on the Pyramid Stage. ‘That was my favourite set of the weekend, because she’s someone I look up to so much in terms of her trajectory and the way she’s managed to keep her integrity.’
The exposure that has come with winning the Emerging Talent Competition has meant Jaya is more engaged with the industry side of being an artist than ever before. ‘It’s really cool that so many people have found me through the process because it’s also had the ripple effect of magazines, lawyers, managers and labels reaching out since. For example, it’s been great engaging with PRS and understanding just how vital that side of things is as well.’
Having brought out vinyl copies of her Redemption Songs EP using part of her PRS funding, Jaya says that now is ‘a really exciting time’ for her career, during which she wants to ‘really develop my performance’.
‘I feel unstoppable,’ she adds. ‘When I’m writing now, I think of being in front of a sea of people in a field. It feels like things are really in my hands right now. Having the autonomy to actually do stuff and have an audience wanting to engage with my art, it’s the best feeling in the world.’
