of Montreal pull out of Israel’s Meteor Festival; Roger Waters asks Kamasi Washington to do the same
of Montreal is the latest act to pull out of Isreal’s upcoming Meteor Festival. (Lana Del Rey, you may remember, dropped out last week.) The band announced the decision with a statement on their socials:
After deep consideration, we have decided to cancel our appearance at the @meteorfestival After exhausting all of the different possible ways of justifying playing an Israeli party festival, while the political and military leaders of the country continue their murderous and brutal policies against the Palestinian people, we came to the realization that there is no actual appropriate move other than to cancel the show. Now is not the time for escapism and celebrations. Now is the time for activism and protests against Israeli apartheid, Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the human rights atrocities being carried out everyday in Gaza by Israeli forces. We have so much love for the peace loving Israeli people and an equal amount of love for the peace loving Palestinians. This is in no way an indictment of the Israeli people in general. We simply cannot turn a blind eye to this crisis. To ignore the call to stand up in support of an oppressed group of humans is one of the worst things one can do. I want to extend a sincere apology to our Israeli fans for canceling the show. Being a citizen of the USA I understand full well how much it sucks to be treated like a purveyor of evil simply because of where one was born. I hope I didn’t come off too sanctimoniously in this post. We would love to come back to Israel to perform again when the time is right
Other artists who have dropped out of Meteor Fest include Shlohmo, Leon Vynehall, Turkish singer Selda, Nazareth duo Zenobia, Volvox, DJ Python, and DJ Mall Grab.
Meteor Festival takes place this weekend (September 6-8) with A$AP Ferg, Flying Lotus, Pusha T, DJ Kose, Soulwax, and more. The bill also includes Kamasi Washington, though Roger Waters wrote an open letter on Facebook imploring Washington not play:
