Good Lorde, being righteous isn’t an easy act
OPINION: Back in 1985, some of the world’s biggest artists banded together to announce that nahnah-na-na-na-nah, they weren’t gonna play Sun City. The song was a clarion call to all musicians to boycott the South African casino resort in protest at the country’s policy of apartheid, and the issue seemed entirely black-and-white, so to speak. You were either against this evil or you supported it.
How much simpler things were then.
Now, as the 21-year-old New Zealander Lorde has discovered, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
Lorde announced on December 18 that she was going to play concerts in Moscow, St Petersburg and Tel Aviv next May as part of her Melodrama world tour. But it didn’t take long for many of her fans to urge a rethink.
"Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation,’’ wrote two female fans in New Zealand, one an Israeli Jew and the other a Palestinian.
‘‘Please join the artistic boycott of Israel, cancel your Israeli tour dates and make a stand. Your voice will join many others and together we can and will make a difference.’’
The issue they were highlighting was the continued occupation of Palestinian lands and the illegal construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It has spawned the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, which in part urges artists not to appear in Israel because doing so helps ‘‘create the false impression that Israel is a ‘ normal’ country like any other’’. In fact, the Palestinian-led campaign insists, Israel is an apartheid state pursuing policies that amount to ethnic cleansing.
It’s powerful, heavily charged stuff, complicated further by the fact that some within the BDS movement think the state of Israel has no right to exist at all.
Little wonder Lorde took notice. On December 20 she posted to her 7 million Twitter followers that she had ‘‘been speaking with many people about this’’ and was ‘‘considering all options’’.
‘‘Thank you for educating me. I am learning all the time too,’’ she added.
On Christmas Eve, the promoter of her Tel Aviv show announced she had cancelled. Lorde, naturally, received both brickbats and bouquets for her change of heart.
‘‘I was naı¨ve to think that an artist of her age would be able to face the pressure of appearing in Israel,’’ promoter Eran Arielli wrote on Facebook (in Hebrew; the English translation is courtesy of The Jerusalem Post). ‘‘She doesn’t deserve all the s... she’s had to endure over the past week. This is not the first cancellation we’ve had, and it won’t be the last.’’
Indeed, the list of artists who’ve announced they were going to play in Israel only to have second thoughts since the BDS campaign was launched in 2005 could make for a pretty decent festival of its own: Elvis Costello, the Pixies (who cancelled in 2010 but played two years later, and again this year), Snoop Dogg, Cat Power and Lauryn Hill.
One of the most outspoken advocates of a musical boycott is Roger Waters. The former Pink Floyd frontman became a convert to the cause after visiting the West Bank on a concert tour in 2006.
He had originally planned to play a gig in Tel Aviv, but switched the venue to Neve Shalom, a village co-founded by Arab and Jewish Israelis, as a gesture intended to support a peaceful resolution of the country’s deep- rooted problems. However, because the concert’s tickets had already been sold, the audience was entirely Jewish.
"It was very strange performing to a completely segregated audience because there were no Palestinians there,’’ Waters told The Independent last year. ‘‘There were just 60,000 Jewish Israelis, who could not have been more welcoming, nice and loyal to Pink Floyd. Nevertheless, it left an uncomfortable feeling.’’
There’s no doubting the sincerity of his views, and claims that Waters is an anti-Semite for urging other artists to follow suit are absurd. But it’s equally absurd that the likes of Radiohead and Nick Cave should be slammed for declining to follow the BDS line.
It’s not just, as Thom Yorke – a long-time supporter of human rights causes – said in an interview with Rolling Stone in June, that ‘‘it’s really upsetting that artists I respect think we are not capable of making a moral decision ourselves after all these years’’.
It’s not just that there are plenty of people (including author J K Rowling, historian Simon Schama, broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and actress Zoe Wanamaker) who genuinely believe the boycott serves only to deepen divisions when the better way forward might be to promote dialogue, something artists are arguably bet- ter placed to do than most.
It’s not just that some of those artists who have shunned Israel – which, to be sure, does have a case to answer on its treatment of Palestinians – see no issue in dealing with other countries whose governments are far from blameless. Russia, for instance, is still on the cards for both Lorde and Waters, despite its record of human rights abuses and suspicions of meddling in other countries’ elections.
If you’re going to boycott every country with a dubious record, how about adding the United States to the list?
It may be the world’s biggest market for live music but it is guilty of targeted political assassinations, installing puppet regimes in foreign countries, and exporting Mariah Carey’s music to the world. Or how about Australia, where much of the remote indigenous population languishes in abject poverty and the treatment of refugees is in serious breach of human rights conventions.
There’s nothing wrong with musicians taking a position on the complex moral and political issues of our times.
The trouble is, we’re not in Sun City any more (and even when we were, plenty still found a way to justify playing there – some, like Queen, claiming they insisted on desegregated audiences and donated some of their proceeds to local charities; of course, they also pocketed a small fortune for their run of dates).
Complexities shouldn’t rule out engagement with the big issues of our times, but picking the right side of the line is rarely as blackand-white as it might seem.
I don’t want to slide into moral equivalence here, but which country can truly claim to be without blemish?
Maybe touring Denmark might be safe (oh, wait, there’s that history with Greenland). What about Sweden? (Oh no, there’s the Sami issue.)
Oh well. There’s always New Zealand I guess.