Extrême-droite / Antifascisme
Pétition face à la censure du Brussels Jazz Week-End
Lettre ouverte, en anglais à l’adresse du Lotto Brussels Jazz Weekend et de Philippe Close
Open Letter to the Lotto Brussels Jazz Weekend direction and Philippe Close, Bourgmestre of Brussels
Last Saturday, May 24th, I was censored for the frst time. Directly by the festival. Indirectly by Mayor Philippe Close. I’m still reeling from the experience, not only because of what happened to me and my band, but because of what it reveals about the state of our cultural sector and our democracies.
Let me walk you through what happened. My band bodies was scheduled to play at 18:30 on the Place de la Bourse stage as part of the Lotto Brussels Jazz Weekend. Every day for the past month, people have gathered at Place de la Bourse at 19:00 to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine, part of a daily movement that’s been happening citywide for over a year and eight months, now centered at Bourse.
On the evening before our concert, the activists were invited on stage during another band’s set, with full consent from the musicians, to speak for about ten minutes. According to what I was told by colleagues and the activists themselves, it was peaceful. The only visible stress came from the festival staff backstage.
Aware of this context, and of the police violence those same activists had faced during Pride just a week earlier, I decided to invite two of them to participate in our set as guests. We wanted to share the space, which had been temporarily claimed by the festival, in a peaceful, respectful, and transparent way. They reached out to us as well. We shared music they could speak over. The idea was simple : a moment of empathy and humanity. It was important for me to frame their presence as part of my artistic proposition, grant them access to the backstage, to avoid having them labeled as criminal trespassers, as they had been portrayed the evening before.
But I was naïve. Naïve to think that City Hall and the police wouldn’t once again frame peaceful presence as a threat to public safety.
When I arrived backstage, I requested three extra wristbands : one for a photographer, which was granted, and two for the activists. I said clearly : “I’d like to invite two Palestinian activists to say a few words during our set, as part of my artistic performance.” Within minutes, the festival director arrived, visibly panicked, flanked by two other members of the direction team. Suddenly, me and my band were surrounded by six or seven people, direction, stage managers, and security ; in a small backstage area. The message was clear : if I went through with this, our concert would be canceled.
They spoke of “avoiding disruption,” “losing control,” and preventing a “protest.” I was told, I quote : “if you give them a finger, they take your arm.” “Doing this could ruin your career.” “Yesterday’s artist had a terrible time, the activists took over the stage.” I later learned from that artist that this was false. The festival twisted his...