It's Xenophobic to cancel a gig in Israel
It's Xenophobic to cancel a gig in Israel
Pass it on…
Yesterday, the Brooklyn fourpiece Big Thief wound up being the latest band who have cancelled gigs in Israel as a result of widespread pressure and bullying from the BDS movement.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I hate Big Thief, or 'Big Thief: 'I’ve never heard of them', because I don't, and of course I have. I remember the first time I heard their breakthrough album “Capacity” and its most noteworthy track 'Mythological Beauty'; it was August 2018 and I was living in East London briefly with a band who no longer talk to me. They were making a music video, and it played every morning, and we all sat around the breakfast table and cried at the magic of their artistry and the story of a daughter understanding her mother's sacrifice years too late: “You held me in the backseat with a dishrag/Soaking up blood with your eye/I was just 5 and you were 27/Praying don’t let my baby die.”
Big Thief are a fucking great band. I saw them the following summer at a day festival in Long Beach. I was there watching another friend's band – Cherry Glazerr – who also no longer associate with me. Big Thief were billed next to them, and by this point had become one of Pitchfork's most hyped touring bands – one of those acts who are never seemingly off-the-road and don't really have a place they call home. I was instantly captured by their set, and I remember they played a song called “Not”. I was floored by it and I searched for it high and low online repeatedly using one or two lyrics I was loosely humming around in my head, and eventually gave up when I got nowhere.
I didn't hear 'Not' again until a year later when they moved from Saddle Creek records to 4AD and I was sent a promo copy of their then forthcoming fourth album “Two Hands”. I'd just interviewed them for their third LP, which came only five months before that one. Big Thief are prolific writers who rumoredly have a habit for hatching two albums' worth of material at a time. I'd met them in the hills of Topanga Canyon one morning for breakfast. I was profiling them for the LA Times.
Band interviews can be very difficult, particularly if it's early on in the promo cycle and each member hasn't quite figured out the story yet, and if there's any tension in the group your presence as a journalist can often feel like door-stepping someone's house unexpectedly after a domestic argument. Something was up with them that day.
They talked about love so much you'd think they invented it. Love and the Earth, as in soil, plants, growth seasons, patience, etc. Such is the way of the hippie warriors. Lead singer Adrienne Lenker, who grew up in a cult which she escaped, was as beguiling as I'd expected; androgynous, with a missing tooth and growing out a buzzcut, beautifully meek but keeping an underlying sort of lupine snarl at the door. They wanted me to believe that they were gentle, and good. Very good people. That, by the way, had become the big concern of bands I was interviewing around 2018 and 2019. It was all about being a humanitarian. Kindness was the new rock'n'roll. I liked their approach to it. It was sweet albeit flawed, but it was coming from an earnest place.
Thinking about it now, Big Thief are a very strong litmus test for the socially aware band du jour. They make serious music in the traditional “anti-capitalist” way, carving out much-anticipated full-length records, pressed independently, and promoted by good old-fashioned state-to-state touring. Lenker even puts out her own solo albums in conjunction with the never-ending releases from the band. I saw her play her album 'Symbol' at a converted old synagogue near Pico during that timeframe, and she stopped mid-set to comment on a fan near the front who had been removed after fainting by paramedics. I've never seen someone faint at a 200-capacity acoustic concert before. There's something happening in these rooms and with these bands that's akin to a new religion, and it's formulated around the concepts of self-betterment, progressive politics, social justice and a Higher Power.
Anyway, here we are some years later, the pandemic behind us, touring schedules reignited and Big Thief announcing two shows in Tel Aviv, in the homeland of one of their members. Their long-haired, lovely bassist Max is Israeli. I always wondered if that was ever going to come up. Well, now it has in a big way.
They released a statement defending their decision. Their statement reminded me of the people I met; optimistic, reasonable, still believing that they might change the world and find peace. It reminded me of the people who were talking about love and understanding. They said their profits would be donated to medical and humanitarian aid for Palestinian children and NGO's that encouraged joint efforts between Palestinians and Israelis:
“It is important for us to share our homes, families and friends with each other in order to gain a deeper understanding of one another and the people and places that have made us who we are. It is important for us to go where we have family to share space and play for them. It is foundational. It is in that spirit that we made our decision to play in Israel.”
Lovely.
Less than a week later, however, they issued a new statement. They decided to call off the shows. They said their prior statement was reckless and naïve. The tone of the very long, and clearly very doctored word salad explainer for their decision was written in classic BDS terminology:
Well well. Do they believe in Israel self-determination? One wonders… They speak of “various layers of privilege” and of their error in thinking that playing in Israel would honor the belief that “music can heal”. Big Thief, like Lana Del Rey and Lorde, among various others before them, are cowardly idiots. Big Thief should and probably do know that BDS care nothing for peace.
If they did, they would agree that playing a gig in Tel Aviv to a culturally, religiously, politically and racially diverse crowd is morally wonderful. Not morally bankrupt. Cancelling is morally bankrupt. Bowing down to the mass peer pressure of xenophobic, propaganda-promoting, ignorant bystanders who have no idea how to achieve peace in the Middle East is not only weak, but evil. It's also embarrassing. It's a shame to never know what a thing it is to experience a concert in Tel Aviv with people of all backgrounds as one. It's an overpowering feeling. Maybe the feeling of the uniting capacity of music. Good luck to Big Thief. They had a chance to do something special, and they blew it.
Big Thief’s decision has, of course, been lauded as one of courage by industry peers, including the band I first discovered Big Thief with, during that time living in London, making a music video. I don't need to tell you why that band stopped talking to me… Apparently if you’re a Jew and you love Israel you don’t deserve to have access to people’s music. Does that sound peaceful to you?
Max is an Israeli? For me that pretty much sums up the warped mind of the typical progressive Jew in 2022. BDSing your own tiny country just to be accepted by the Non Jewish progressives. That is sick.
To be a jew is to be alone. I had to have a discussion with my daughter about her liberal friends’ views of Israel and the wider context. It is a lot of effort to explain our history against a lot of lies coming from the left. Takes a long time and many conversations. It makes us alone. We believe in equal rights but are not allowed to be included as a people deserving of them, even by those who are underserved or minorities. It makes me sad but resilient.