Glastonbury hits back at Jay-Z critics

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - Glastonbury Festival organisers have defended their choice of rapper Jay-Z to headline this year's event after claims it had upset traditional rock fans and led to poor ticket sales.

Organiser Emily Eavis said the festival had to move with the times and she blamed an "innate conservatism" in Britain for the negative reaction in some quarters.

She said the row over her choice of a black American rapper rather than a rock band like Radiohead had raised uncomfortable questions over British attitudes to race and class.

"There is an interesting undercurrent in the suggestion that a black U.S. hip-hop artist shouldn't be playing in front of what many perceive to be a white, middle-class audience," she wrote in Tuesday's Independent newspaper.

"I'm not sure what to call it, at least not in public, but this is something that causes me some disquiet.

"Maybe what the critics have really revealed is something about attitudes that are still all too prevalent in Britain: an innate instinct to go back to base and play safe. An innate conservatism, a stifling reluctance to try something different."

First day ticket sales of 100,000 had "blown away" the organisers, Eavis added. But critics pointed out that the event sold out within hours in previous years.

Previous headliner Noel Gallagher, of Oasis, accused organisers of ruining the open-air festival, held at Eavis's father's Somerset farm.