Artist quits over show on slavery
American singer-songwriter Moses Sumney yesterday cancelled his performance at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, protesting the event’s ties to a show on slavery performed by whites.
The black entertainer criticised the festival for supporting SLAV, a theatrical production on black slavery that he said constitutes cultural appropriation.
SLAV, directed by Robert Lepage and starring Betty Bonifassi, sparked protests in Montreal last week, with its critics arguing it appropriates black culture.
In the production, the mainly white cast dress as cotton pickers and poor field workers and sing old slave songs.
“Their songs are taken from them by white people and performed to rooms full of other white people for high ticket prices,” Sumney wrote in a letter to festival organisers that he also published on his Tumblr blog.
“I much would have preferred seeing actual black Americans sing their own slave songs.”
Bonifassi told the Montreal Gazette last week that she didn’t “feel badly at all” about the production. “I don’t see colour. To me, it doesn’t exist, physically or in music,” she said.
In his letter to the festival, Sumney criticised Bonifassi’s comments, saying that “the solution to racism is not to erase race altogether”.
He also compared SLAV to blackface minstrel shows. “The only thing missing is black paint,” he wrote.
The jazz festival’s media relations director, Greg Kitzler, said, “We respect his decision and hope Moses Sumney will perform at the festival in a near future.”
Kitzler declined to comment on whether the festival would continue supporting SLAV, but added that a press release would offer clarification.
The play is scheduled to run until July 14 as part of the festival’s 39th edition. Thousands of musical acts have performed at the festival over the years, including Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King and Diana Ross.