Against the odds, the critics, the mud and the rain, Glastonbury was yesterday proving once again why it is Britain’s favourite music festival.

Doubters said that the organisers had blundered in choosing the rapper Jay-Z as Saturday’s headline act. That was proved, they felt, when not all the 134,000 tickets sold out in advance — as had been the case in previous years.

But within hours of the festival opening on Friday, all the tickets had gone, and yesterday the vast crowd was enjoying sunshine, music and the “Glasto” vibe.

Despite the presence on stage of Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, a 39-year-old American multi-millionaire musician and businessman, bling-laden punters were conspicuous by their absence. Glastonbury has never celebrated ostentatious consumption; indeed, it has been a firm supporter of the environmental charity Greenpeace.

Now that numerous music festivals are competing in the UK to fill their bills, Glastonbury has to fight to maintain the quality of its music — particularly since its charitable focus limits what it can pay top acts.

Yesterday the first artist to appear on the main stage was the British 1980s star Shakin’ Stevens, though the Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand were the pick of the early acts. Playing in Glastonbury’s “unfloodable” new musical nerve centre, the Park, the four-man outfit outshone a lacklustre Pete Doherty. The big hit of the afternoon was the American singer-guitarist Seasick Steve, a charismatic bluesman.

Stackridge, English pastoral rockers who opened the inaugural Glastonbury in 1970, also did well with an audience who seemed not to have noticed the pledge by Michael Eavis, the festival’s founder, to make things “more edgy this year”.

It had been difficult to secure a name big enough to hold down the headline slot on Saturday night. “We got a bit of a kicking this year,” said Emily Eavis, Michael’s daughter, the festival organiser.

First, Radiohead turned them down, preferring to do their own outdoor shows this summer. Blur showed some interest in temporarily re-forming before their singer, Damon Albarn, got cold feet.

Jay-Z, whom Eavis described as “beautifully dignified”, was a late choice designed, she said, to “shake things up a bit”. The rapper’s manager had intimated to Eavis that Glastonbury’s “hippie thing” wasn’t “up Jay-Z’s street”, but the crowd happily carried on regardless.

As the sun appeared yesterday afternoon a major casualty was James Blunt, who notably failed to motivate the audience, but as shadows lengthened, the Welsh retro-pop diva Duffy drew fans back with a powerful performance.

The festival really came alive, though, with the early-evening arrival of the French-Latin world-music star Manu Chao. His band’s frantic pop-reggae looked uncool but proved irresistible to Glastonbury’s sun-soaked crowd. The Pyramid stage was packed to its 80,000 capacity in anticipation of the arrival of Amy Winehouse and for the second night running she triumphed, looking better than she has for a year.

As she launched into her set, it was clear her commanding voice has, for now, retained its power, with only the occasional trace of hoarseness betraying her recent lung problems.

“I’m beyond happy,” she announced, explaining later how overjoyed she was that she would be reunited with her husband, Blake, “in two weeks”, on his release from prison.

She brought tears to the eyes of some young women with her lovelorn ballad Wake Up Alone, a song that emphasises how unhappiness has been Winehouse’s most potent muse as a songwriter.

This comeback suggested that if she can channel her darker impulses creatively she could be queen of Glastonbury for years to come.

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