American rapper Azealia Banks has cancelled her performances at two UK festivals this summer because she claims the promoters “forced” her to say “free Palestine”.
In a post on X on 25 June, the star claimed the promoters of Boomtown Festival and Maiden Voyage threatened to cut her from the bill for not agreeing to their demands, which she called “overt antisemitism”.
Her performances at Boomtown, a festival held at Winchester’s Matterley Estate from 6 to 10 August, and the one-day Maiden Voyage, at south London’s Burgess Park on 9 August, were Banks’s only two UK dates this summer.
She wrote: “I am cancelling Boomtown and Maiden Voyage, the promoters have been stressing me out for weeks trying to force me to say free Palestine and threatening to cut me from the bill because I won’t say free Palestine and I’m not dealing with the threats and I’m not putting on a f***ing hijab.
“They’re both basically trying to extort me - by insinuating that I need to say I support Palestine or they will drop me from the gig BUT I would much rather drop them and not associate with anything that has cheap group think bulls*** attached to it.
She added, “If they want to allow some no-name dj’s to bully them into desecrating the nature of this music ecosystem and make ME the issue - whilst there being absolutely no ethical consumption under capitalism. Then that’s fine.”
Her expletive-filled post continued, “More thinly veiled racism. And overt antisemitism from the f***ing gays for Hamas.”
Boomtown has told the JC: “Following her post on X in the early hours of this morning, we can confirm that Azealia Banks has withdrawn from the lineup and will no longer be performing at Boomtown Festival.
“For clarity, Boomtown does not and will never dictate the personal views and beliefs of performers.”
Boomtown is a five-day immersive music festival describing itself as “on a mission to inspire the emergence of a better world”, while Maiden Voyage is an electronic music event featuring cutting-edge DJs and artists. Maiden Voyage festival has been contacted by the JC.
Earlier this month, Banks declared herself “a Zionist” and stated that “no black person should be supporting Palestine,” in an apparently alcohol-fuelled diatribe on social media.
Best known for her song 212 and with a track record of engaging in heated social media disputes, Banks shared her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and how black people are treated in the Middle East in a succession of posts, which she dubbed an “espresso martini rant”.
The singer, 34, pointed to the historic treatment of black people in Arab countries, particularly through the slave trade, as part of the reason she supports Israel: “Ur [sic.] not going to get some performative ‘free Palestine’ s*** out of me when Palestine and the entire Arab world has it enshrined in scripture... that black people are to be used as slave labour,” Banks wrote, though she did not provide evidence to support this claim.
“The Israel-Palestine dilemma is just a way for non-Jewish whites to throw a chip at Jews,” she went on. “Because if you *really* gave a f*** and *REALLY* examined the situation you would see that there are black people who have been silenced and had their limbs chopped off and thrown in cages for Arabs to have actually colonised the Middle East.”
