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As part of a festival overtly expressing their support for Palestine and the LGBTQ+ community, did some of Primavera Sound’s acts fall short when it came to using their platforms this year?
With the slogan ‘Nobody is Normal’, and a lign-up made up, deliberately, of 40% male, 40% female, and 20% mixed/non-binary artists, as well as all-female headline acts, Primavera Sound Festival’s progressive stance on identity politics and gender representation is obvious.
Organised by Fundació Primavera Sound, it would be difficult to argue that they didn’t deliver on their brief to promote ‘culture as a driver of sustainable development, innovation, inclusion, and social cohesion.’
However, between Aperol Island, the Revolut stand and stage, and the Amazon (???) stage, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the music festival for a sponsorship seminar or a corporate conference.
The non-profit make-up of Fundació Primavera Sound means that the festival itself serves as a fundraiser for future editions. This includes the involvement of collaborators like Estrella Damm, Revolut, and Cupra.
Could this overt appeal to the LGBTQ+ community through the slogan ‘Nobody is Normal’ be seen as a kind of pinkwashing by these brands for commercial gain?
Unsilence Gaza
The organisers of Primavera festival also proudly presented their hardline political views
against discrimination, humanitarian crises, and genocide.
Attendees could enter a tunnel simulation near the festival entrance – designed by Palestinian sound engineer Oussama Rima – which used sounds of explosions and ominous music to simulate the soundscape of occupied Gaza. The installation was part of the festival’s effort to ‘Unsilence Gaza’.
The message on the outside of the installation read: ‘when everything blows up, don’t hide in silence’. It’s ironic then, that only a few of the artists invited to play actually used their platform to promote this important message.
Where was their voice?
The failure of main-stage artists in particular, such as Chappell Roan, Wolf Alice, and Beach House, to use their platforms to call attention to grave acts of inhumanity seems to go against the very values espoused by the festival.
Especially when we consider that there is no better way to send a message than to mobilise as large a crowd as possible. With this in mind, the almost 300,000 people who attended Primavera Sound this year seemed like a good place to start.
This was an opportunity that did not go missed by artists like IDLES, Black Country, New Road, and Fontaines DC who, despite the irony of the overtly-capitalist branding looming above them, dedicated much of their sets to raising and reviving political consciousness of atrocities in Palestine.
IDLES’ Joe Talbot, for instance, led a ‘Viva Palestina!’ chant for several minutes, as well as altering several song lyrics to reference it. Black Country, New Road, with watermelon stickers adorning their instruments on stage, reminded the crowd that ‘more important than any of us having fun here, [is] to think about the people in Gaza right now, free Palestine. Don’t stop talking about it.’
As for Fontaines’ DC, in an act not far from the harrowing projection of morality statistics projected by Massive Attack during Rock en Seine last year, the Irish/Spanish band displayed huge screens during their set. The first of these read ‘Free Palestine’. This was followed by a huge Palestinian flag projected on the back wall of the stage, and more signs reading ‘Israel is committing a genocide, use your voice.’
And of course, it wouldn’t be right to talk about Primavera’s coverage of Palestine without mentioning the Palestinian rap and producer duo Shabjdeed & Al Nather, whose set drew crowds to the Levi’s warehouse, a converted car park, complete with a several metre tall Palestinian flag to pass round.
