Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa concerts cancelled following boycott
Oscar-nominated composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and acclaimed musician Duda Tassa have faced two concert cancellations due to the ongoing boycott in solidarity with Palestine.
In 2023, the Radiohead guitarist and revered film composer released a collaborative album, Jarak Qaribak, with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa. The duo was set to perform in Bristol on June 23rd and Hackney on June 25th. Both events have been cancelled, as announced on the official Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement Instagram (BDS).
These concerts “would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide against 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime,” the post states.
It goes on to explain: “Jonny Greenwood, guitarist with Radiohead and The Smile, had performed in apartheid Tel Aviv along with Dudu Tassa in May 2024, on a night that genocidal Israeli forces massacred displaced Palestinians in their tents in Rafah, burning them alive, just a short drive away.”
In 2024, Greenwood defended their ongoing creative relationship, as well as their decision to perform this show: “No art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us,” he continued. “How can it be? But doing nothing seems like a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.”
The BDS statement then turns explicitly to Tassa’s involvement with Israel, reporting that Tassa is more complicit than his birthright alone. It states, “Dudu Tassa has repeatedly entertained genocidal Israeli forces in between these massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, willingly acting as a cultural ambassador for apartheid Israel.”
In response, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) had called for “‘boycotting, peacefully disrupting, and creatively protesting’ The Smile’s tour, after its failure to distance itself from Jonny Greenwood’s shameful artwashing of genocide.” In this case, artwashing refers to the use of art to mask or legitimise negative actions, particularly those associated with gentrification or social cleansing.
The post finally calls for the boycott of all future The Smile and Radiohead events, “until these groups convincingly distance themselves, at a minimum, from Jonny Greenwood’s crossing of our peaceful picket line during this genocide.”
Neither Greenwood nor Tassa have commented on the cancellations.
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