Thursday, May 3, 2012

Dervish cancels Israel tour - FullSet follows suit

Statements from the two bands:


Statement from Dervish:

(30 April) Dervish wish to announce they will not be taking part in the Irish music concert series in Israel this June.

Our original decision to participate in the concerts was, like all our tours and appearances, completely non-political.

The organiser of the shows is a musician and friend of the band for many years. He has worked to bridge divides between people through music for much of his life. These concerts were organised in this same spirit.

At the time we agreed to these performances we were unaware there was a cultural boycott in place.

We now feel that we do not wish to break this boycott.

Our decision to withdraw from the concerts reflects our wish to neither endorse nor criticise anyone's political views in this situation.

Dervish are a grouping of like musical minds, we are not a political party.

Our motivation as a band has always been and will continue to be our love of music.


Statement from FullSet:


With a heavy heart FullSet would like to announce that we are cancelling our June tour in Israel which was originally billed as Dervish & ourselves.

In the past few days both groups have been publicly berated and attacked for breaking a cultural boycott on Israel that neither group was aware of when accepting the tour. 

Avshalom Farjun, a respected Israeli musician who organized the tour, did so without any politcal motives or agenda. He is a kind and honourable person who has acted with gratiousness and understanding throughout this situation. 

We are musicians. We love music. We do not discriminate against any person nor push our individual political ideas onto anyone. We were going to Israel to play for human beings, regardless of their beliefs, political views, religion or ethnic background.

The anger behind comments and insults thrown back and forth between people on our page and on Dervish’s in the past few days is saddening to read. 

These comments have come from people from every side of the spectrum. For us, regardless of anyone’s views or comments, the goodness is gone out of this trip.

We won’t be going this time and we’d like to apologise to anyone who was intending to come to our concert and hope in the future we get the opportunity to play for you no matter where in the world it may be.

We encourage everyone to please stop arguing over this tour. 
It’s finished. Time to move on.

Our warmest wishes to everyone,

FullSet -

No comments:

Post a Comment