Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa answer the cancellation of their UK shows

Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa's two UK concerts in June, at Bristol Beacon and at Hackney Church in London, have been cancelled after a campaign by boycott activists. On Tuesday 6 May the pair and their musicians gave their account in a joint statement on social media. The venues and their staff, they say, had received enough credible threats to conclude it was not safe to go ahead, and promoters could not be expected to pay for protecting the band or the audience.

The shows were for Jarak Qaribak (“Your Neighbour Is Your Friend”), their 2023 album of mostly Arabic love songs, sung by guests from across the Middle East. The statement points out that its singers come from Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq, and that the campaign had asked the venues to recommit to inclusive programming. Just not this particular mix of cultures, apparently.³

Stopping musicians from playing is censorship, the statement says, and nothing positive has come of it; the band find themselves condemned by right and left alike. It quotes the recent open letter from artists in support of Kneecap, against political repression of artistic freedom, and calls it sad that the people defending Kneecap's freedom of expression are the most determined to restrict theirs. It agrees that none of this matters as much as what is happening in Gaza and Israel, and praises the bravery of the band's Arab musicians and singers. Intimidating venues into pulling our shows won’t help achieve the peace and justice everyone in the Middle East deserves.³

Bristol was cancelled first. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the Bristol Palestine Alliance had urged a boycott of that show since late April and written to the venue. Bristol Beacon told ticket holders the concert would not take place, a spokesperson saying it could not run the event viably with everyone's wellbeing and safety in mind. PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a founder of the BDS movement, welcomed that on X and called on Hackney Church to follow, then welcomed the London cancellation by 2 May. The Telegraph quoted a Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesman calling the pressure intimidation rather than activism.

PACBI calls the talk of threats unsubstantiated. It says the concerts, which it calls artwashing genocide, were cancelled following peaceful BDS pressure¹. Its campaign goes back to the duo's Tel Aviv concert in May 2024, which it says fell on the night of an Israeli strike on displaced Palestinians in Rafah; Greenwood answered it then by calling a project of Arab and Jewish musicians worthwhile and the silencing of Israeli artists unprogressive. PACBI now wants fans to boycott future shows by The Smile and Radiohead unless they distance themselves from Greenwood.

The cancelled concerts