This Sunday’s summer sun is an overbearing mother as the crowd queues to get into Days Like This: she comes on a little strong, but it’s OK, because she just wants you to have a good time. Blessed with such a sunny day, and a sky so blue it verges on Truman Show-style unreality, the atmosphere for this inaugural event is as warm and relaxed as the weather. The queues are full of broad grins and summery fashions, as the gentle babble of idle conversation flows through the line.

Inside the gates, the throb of distant beats carries through the avenue of food stalls and merch stands, the crowd already swaying to the disembodied grooves. It will soon become clear that, at Days Like This, groovers will always be able to find a loping beat to move their feet wherever they go.

As the Dodos take to the Main Stage, the shade worship has already begun in earnest, as the crowd beneath the trees on either side are equal in number to the enthusiastic bunch up front for the San Franciscans. Rattling through their ramshackle Afro-pop, the Dodos are certainly charming, but the crowd is too sluggish to properly engage, and the band’s set fails to really take off.

As one of the day’s numberless DJs steps up to fill the gap between sets, the prospect of a cold drink and a seat in the shade seems like a heavenly option. At the bar, the divine nature of that idea sours slightly at the idea of paying $4 for what feels like little more than a shot of water.

From the shady fringe of the Main Stage, Eli – œPaperboy’ Reed & the True Loves deliver the first real shot of energy to the crowd. Reed is a natural showman in the vein of soul stars like Sam Cooke, and the soul-revival grooves punched out by the True Loves gets the crowd grooving with abandon – seated and standing alike.

After the heat of the sun, the chance to listen to some cool hip hop grooves in the shady interior of the Forum Stage is too good an opportunity to miss. Los Angelino Steven Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, commands the stage with an energetic presence. Grinning wildly and moving to his own grooves, FlyLo is as much a participant as DJ, unmistakably thrilled to be performing to such an adoring crowd. His beats flow and shift with electrifying grace as his hands moving with purposeful precision between sampler, EQ and laptop, melding jazzy hip hop grooves and dub flavours with futuristic, astral sounds. Avant-garde ambience and hip-shaking grooves seem like star-crossed lovers in FlyLo’s skilled hands.

The mood in the Forum undergoes a sudden shift when hip hop duo Yo Majesty! take the stage. The beats become harder, heavier, and the imposing figures of Jwl B and Shunda K take the stage, the latter dressed in full combat gear including body armour. Their aggressive, bass-heavy hip hop sound largely means that the lyrics are hard to understand, but the force with which they deliver their rhymes is earth-shaking. Many flee in the face of this onslaught, but those who stay are rewarded with an emphatic performance from this uncompromising duo.

The atmosphere in the Forum Stage is growing thick, so the evening air comes as a welcome relief. As the sun gives way to twilight, a band takes to the main stage, impeccably dressed in neat suits collared shirts. These, ladies and gentlemen, are the famed Dap-Kings, as guitarist and hype-man Binky Griptite announces. The Dap-Kings are a drum-tight soul band, as ably demonstrated by their opening number, featuring Griptite on vocals.

Nothing, however, can compare to their sound when in the presence of Ms Sharon Jones. Though the Dap-Kings are certainly amongst the best soul bands to recreate the sounds of a bygone era, their lead singer is possessed of a staggering magnetism. Otis Redding had it; Bowie has it; hell, Johnny Rotten had it, for a while there. In the presence of such a figure, everything else pales in comparison. Because of this, the indisputable skill of Dap-Kings is eclipsed by the arrival of Sharon Jones.

Taking to the Main Stage like she owns it, the five-foot-at-best Ms Jones seems giant – a stadium-sized personality in a pint-size figure. As she shimmies her way onto the stage, the crowd erupts in rapturous applause, doubtless on the brink of fainting when she showed off what she calls her “Tina Turner strut”, a sight that could make the most stoic man bust a move. Asking those in the crowd who had never seen her before, Sharon Jones is visibly delighted by the number of first-timers, coyly referring to them as her “virgins” for the night.

Without further ado, the band strikes up, delivering more of their invigorating soul grooves. The crowd bursts into life at once, everyone in sight boogieing and grooving like it was 1969 again. Belting out tunes with unceasing energy, Sharon Jones works the crowd like the professional she is, even enlisting everyone as back-up singers to a rapturous response. She invited several onlookers onto the stage to dance with her, from an eccentric man to a group of four young women. Always in control, Ms Jones was upstaged only once, by the gorgeous Charlie, a young woman whose dance moves impressed everyone – Sharon included.

As Binky Griptite thanks those assembled for taking part in “the Dap-tone soul review”, even he seems slightly baffled to be announcing Public Enemy as the next act on stage. There does indeed seem to be something almost unreal about the heroes of hip hop’s golden era headlining today’s event: given that their seminal album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was released over twenty years ago, how will this crowd react?

Any such questions evaporate when Public Enemy finally take the stage. Technical hassles delay the band, eliciting the first boos of the day, but the reaction to Flavor Flav’s appearance onstage wipes away any negativity. The crowd explodes when the emphatic presence of Chuck D strides out and bellows the opening lines of Bring the Noise. The crowd echoes and amplifies Chuck’s already impressive voice, chanting as one “Bass! How low can you go?” Voices are raised again to shout out the chorus lines, a definitive statement of Public Enemy’s continuing relevance, even two decades on.

Pounding through each track of …Nation of Millions, it is obvious that Public Enemy have not let age get the best of them. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine them having ever been more electrifying – from their ability to make a crowd explode at will to Chuck D’s obvious fitness, running back and forth across the stage without ever seeming to lose his breath. Even Flavor Flav, a cartoonish figure most of his life, is a charismatic presence. Granted, he undermines some of his status with well-intentioned babbling (“the only one you can trust more than yourself is you” being one of the prime examples), but he still manages to make his signature cry of “yeeeeeeeah, boiiiiiii!” seem vital and, shockingly, cool.

Days Like This is a pleasant change from the usual festival routine, doing away with chart-friendly hipster acts in favour of strong musical bonds between its acts. From the soul-revivalists to cutting-edge dance, avant-garde artists and era-spanning hip-hop, everything today created a joyous union of past and present.