Kevin Bronson on April 16th, 2016

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Bronson’s Day 1: Mgbongwana Star, HAELOS, Mavis Staples, Goldroom, Bob Moses, Lord Huron, Christine and the Queens, the Kills, M83, Savages

On a Friday made for shiny happy people waving hands — and they had every right to, considering the volume of dance music of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival — there were precious few signs that much besides crushing synths and pop hooks mattered.

Two beacons shone brightest, though: 76-year-old soul queen Mavis Staples, who gave a cross-generational crowd in the Gobi Tent an afternoon history lesson, and London quartet Savages, who ravaged the Mojave Tent with a ear-bleeding blast of visceral post-punk. The former left fans in misty-eyed bliss; the latter left fans with bruises.

Each served as sufficient antidote for the likes of rapaciously pandering Jack U, various outsized purveyors of elevator music and the interchangeable (from a distance) synth-pop.

||| Also: There were more highlights; see Andrew Veeder’s Day 1.

The news of the day: Gates opened late. Asked if there were a specific reason, a Coachella representative said, “No comment.” British rapper Skepta canceled both his Coachella appearances. Sasha also canceled. U.K. dream-poppers Lush, still trying to clear their visa hurdles, canceled their scheduled Saturday set but said they’d make it for Weekend 2. Gusty winds were not as big a problem as feared, nowhere near the apocalypse of 2013. And Friday ended with LCD Soundsystem’s stirring tribute to David Bowie.

Chronologically, Day 1:

12:30: Fans finally make it past the second checkpoint and scramble to try to make sets that started at noon, including Congolese ensemble Mbongwana Star. They reach the Gobi Tent and are rewarded with 16 or so minutes of pulse-pounding rhythms, chirping guitar licks and acrobatic vocals from as many as four singers. Little English was spoken, except when wheelchair-bound vocalist Theo Nzonza said, “Thank you very much! Is good!” It was.

12:53: Anchored by the semi-sweet boy/girl vocals of Arthur Delaney and Lotti Benardout, London’s trip-pop outfit HAELOS prove awfully brooding for an early-afternoon set, but they win a good crowd in the Mojave Tent, the thunder from their dual drummers offered a rare 1 p.m. exclamation point. Highlights: The songs “Dust,” “Cry” and the title track from their debut “Full Circle.”

2:50: Somebody gives soul legend Mavis Staples a bouquet of flowers midway through her 50 minutes in the Gobi Tent. In return, she is in the process of giving the crowd perma-smiles.

It felt like a landmark set, and in the middle of the afternoon. There were some classics — “REspect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There,” along with “Freedom Highway,” which saw Staples dig down deep with her high-mileage voice to belt the anthem, written by her father Pop Staples in 1962, about the civil rights mark from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. “I was there and I’m still here,” she explained. I’m a witness … I’m a soldier.”

She also performed songs from her new M. Ward-produced album “Livin’ on a High Note” — there were wry smiles when she urged fans to “buy my new CD” too. The Benjamin Booker-penned new song “Take Us Back” embodied the familial performance: “I got friends / I got family / I got help from all the people who love me,” she sang with a maternal smile.

Staples grappled with the desert winds and dust, coughing a few times before acknowledging it at the end of the set: “Choke-chella,” she laughingly cried out.”I’m choking on Choke-chella.”

But the lightest moment came between songs when she was distracted by the booming bass from an adjacent stage. “This is a tent, but they were nice enough to get us some chandeliers,” she said, pointing to ceiling. Then, wryly, Staples sang the hook to Sia’s “Chandelier.” Stopping, she joked, “That girl’s gonna come after me, I better be careful.”

3:05: “I toldja we needed to see her,” a father tells his teenage daughter as they depart Mavis Staples’ set.

3:35: “We play dance music with real instruments, so thank you for coming to see that,” Goldroom mastermind Josh Legg tells a big, footloose crowd in the Gobi Tent. Their breezy, California-tinted electro-pop goes down like an iced drink, especially “Fifteen” and “Embrace.”

4:04: Next door in the Mojave Tent, Miami Horror are playing dance music with real instruments.

4:30: T-shirt du jour: “Say Perhaps to Drugs.”

4:40: There were backing tracks involved in Bob Moses’ set, but the U.K. duo, performing with a live drummer, have found a compelling midpoint between man and machine. The sprawling, sometimes spacious jams on “Day Gone By” would work better in a musty warehouse at 3 a.m. than in a windswept tent at dinnertime, but Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance won the moment, with a strong whiff of the underground in the air.

5:15: People are smiling and swing-dancing to Lord Huron’s Western-flavored folk-rock and it’s the first time we hear an unironic “y’all” all day. Not so “Strange Trails” after all.

5:50: The cult of personality is strong with Héloïse Letissier, the French spitfire who fronts Christine and the Queens. Her genre-bending pop darts are playful and challenging, and they come with killer choreography. Her backing band and dancers are white-T-shirted hunks, and in the Gobi Tent, Letissier, who identifies as pansexual, cavorted with them in moves both spastic and liquid. “’Cause I won / I’m a man now / ’Cause I’ve got iT / I’m a man now, she sings in “iT,” a strong declaration, in voice and in motion.

6:25: The dummy who forgot googles and a bandanna gets eyefuls and mouthfuls of dust while traipsing through the headwind to the Outdoor Theatre.

6:30: The Kills, performing as a four-piece in support of their first album in five years, “Ash & Ice,” are riding that wind. In the context of having witnessed an afternoon of dance bands, Alison Mosshart, Jamie Hince (who shredded so hard his shades flew off) and gang are searingly good. Scratch that. No context needed.

7:10: Food lines long, really long. Burrito good. Coffee stand attendant smiles when a man simply orders “caffeine.”

8:05: M83 proves they still belong on the main stage, even if the songs from their new album “Junk” fall flat compared with their catalog. Six songs in they try for some sort of transcendence with “Do It, Try It,” but it feels sleepy.

8:34: M83 awakens the crowd with “Midnight City.” Perfect. But five minutes later there’s little to prevent anybody on the periphery from wandering toward the Outdoor Theatre to see what the roar for Sufjan Stevens was all about.

9:35: When Jenny Beth looks at you, you know you’ve been looked at.

The frontwoman of the black-dressed U.K. post-punk band Savages wields something between a stare and glare, and the denizens in the front of the Mojave got an eyeful as well as an earful. The message, broadly and iterated specifically at one point, is “you must question yourself.”

Savages’ hour of sonic body-blows — cheers to the rhythm section of bassist Ayse Hassan and drummer Fay Milton — came with Jehnny Beth (real name: Camille Berthomier) perched precariously atop the barrier for two songs. The laying on of the hands was followed by an epic episode of full-on crowd-surfing; as she sang “Will you catch me when I fall?” the frontwoman was passed 20 yards back into the masses and returned to the pit. The extended outro of “Adore,” in which she repeats “I adore life,” felt exultant.

10:55: Jack U’s set at the Outdoor Theatre sounds (and looks) like you’ve walked into a crowded video arcade. Of course, the person who thinks that is in a distinct minority as he makes his way toward the main stage, as Jack U has drawn the biggest crowd of the day.

12:00: Purity Ring beckons. And beckons. Tired legs and sore feet respond: “Next time.”