Moses Sumney has the media buzzing because of a recent show cancellation. The African-American singer was set to perform at Montreal’s International Jazz Festival on Tuesday evening. He decided to pull out of the show when he realized that he would be sharing the bill with a racist production that was being heavily protested by members of the city’s community. He and his opening act Un Blonde agreed to replace the performance with a counter-event at another venue.
Although many media outlets have been contacting Sumney for interviews, the artist refuses to comment in such a way. Instead, he opted to publish the letter he wrote to the festival when he decided to pull out of its programming.
Here is one excerpt of the artist’s letter.
“Now to address the quote “all cultures and ethnicities suffer the same,” and the fact that this show is not just about African-American slavery. You must understand that the transatlantic chattel slave trade was incomparable to other types of slavery for several reasons – its scale (about 12.5 million slaves were taken from Africa), its severity, and its modern legacy – after 200+ years of legal slavery, descendants of slaves are still at the bottom of every society they were integrated into, are still being imprisoned, policed, and murdered at unjust rates. (I’m sure you know this.)”
He ends the letter with so much class, the production might not catch the shade until next month.
“Those are my initial thoughts. I am open to hearing yours. Thanks for creating a space for a dialogue – I sincerely hope it’s with the intention to listen (this time) and not just defend your position.”
The text is available in full here.