With 600,000 people attending, Hull Fair is the UK’s biggest – and has a thrilling but overlooked musical subculture. We follow the blaring soundsystems to meet the DJs and MCs facing off in waltzer battles
The smell of fried onions wafts across the pink glare of candy floss, as lights pop, smoke billows and songs play simultaneously at deafening volume: walking through Hull Fair is a sensory overload.
Stretching across 16 acres and more than 300 attractions, it is one of the largest travelling fairs in Europe and will pull in around 600,000 people during a week-long run that ends on Sunday. However, despite the myriad thrills, including the UK’s tallest fairground ride, there’s one attraction that remains king: the waltzers. When this year’s event was officially opened by the lord mayor, it was via a ceremonial bell ringing on one of these rides.
Not only do the waltzers spin people into a state of dizzied nausea but they are also home to a genuine musical subculture, where DJs spinning high-speed dance music – hardcore, donk, bounce and more – join forces with MCs to throw whopping parties on the rides, with hugely impressive sound and lighting systems. “It feels like you’re in a mini-rave or a mobile nightclub,” says Hannah Taylor, who DJd on the Hell-Blazer waltzers last year, calling it a “bucket list” moment. “I grew up in Warrington from a working-class background. When the fair was on, the waltzers had the best music. That’s the music that I grew up listening to, and that I now play.”
