Montreal Jazz Fest cancels show with mostly white cast singing slave songs amid backlash

The Montreal Jazz Festival has cancelled the remaining 16 performances of SLAV, a show involving a mostly white cast singing African American slave songs, following growing public outrage that included protests, a high profile artist pulling out of a show, and a critical open letter signed by 1,500 people.

“Since the beginning of SLAV performances, the Festival team has been shaken and strongly affected by all comments received,” the Montreal Jazz Festival said in a statement released Wednesday. “We would like to apologize to those who were hurt. It was not our intention at all.”

SLAV was staged by celebrated playwright and director Robert Lepage, and singer Betty Bonifassi, both of whom are white, and who had defended their production prior to its cancellation.

Opposition to the show’s whiteness and how it profits from Black slave songs has been simmering for months, exposing long-standing grievances about racial inequality that permeates the province’s arts sector.

On opening night last month, a crowd gathered outside the theatre to voice its disgust.

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On Tuesday, LA-based musician Moses Sumney pulled out of his performance, noting that it didn’t seem like organizers were taking the protests seriously.

“The show immediately struck me as distasteful when I first heard about it, before the protests,” Sumney wrote in a letter to the festival.

He also took aim at Bonifassi, who had previously told the Montreal Gazette, “I don’t see colour; to me, it doesn't exist.” Sumney responded: “I am particularly disturbed by the push for colorblindness, as it reveals a lack of knowledge on how racial parity is actually achieved.”

Earlier on Wednesday, a group of 1,500 Montreal artists, musicians and writers published an open letter calling on festival organizers to cancel the show, along with a list of other structural demands to address racial inequality in media and the arts.

Those who penned the letter say they have “watched with astonishment and disgust as a theatrical production based on African-American slave songs was coordinated by a group of white people, performed by a cast of predominantly white people” and presented by the Montreal Jazz Festival. “We are alarmed by the dismissal and silencing of Black voices in the creation, development, staging and promotion of the show SLAV,” the letter continues.

“These songs were born out of the needs of African-descended peoples while in bondage,” the letter states. “These songs were used by these peoples to lift their spirits while they endured perpetual physical, sexual, and mental abuse. They were also used to communicate maps and escape routes. These slave songs were born out of the myriad types of violence established, perpetuated and maintained by a white power structure. To now have that violence exploited for profit by white artists and producers both embodies and perpetuates the historical exploitation and marginalization of Black populations in Quebec and the world over.”

The letter calls on the jazz festival to acknowledge Rouè-Doudou Boicel, a Black man originally from French Guyana, as its founder, and develop an equity policy to target Black and Indigenous people along with other people of colour.

Inspired by a jazz festival he attended in Vermont, Boicel founded an international jazz festival in Montreal in 1978 called the Rising Sun Festijazz, at his club of the same name, Rising Sun. The festival featured Ray Charles, Nina Simone and other influential performers. In an interview with VICE News, he said he faced doubt when he first began the festival, but was able to attract packed crowds with acts like BB King. His festival ran for three years, from 1978 to 1980. Boicel said he registered his festival in 1980. The Montreal International Jazz Festival launched a year later. Around this time, a fire at the Rising Sun forced it to close.

“They stole my festival,” he said over the phone Wednesday. “I never got any money from the government for my festival. They refuse. You know what Montreal told me? They cannot have two festivals.”

He said the jazz festival has never recognized him as its founder.

As for the show SLAV, he said, “It’s a gimmick and insulting … All the money they make from this show goes to no black people.”

The letter also demanded that the production company behind the show create opportunities for Black-led projects that would allow Black artists to tell their own stories. It also called on the theatre that hosted the production to apologize, independently evaluate their programming and commit to hiring Black writers, directors and actors.

The letter’s authors say Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and minister of culture Marie Montpetit must correct racial inequity in arts funding by adding financing and appointing Black professionals to advisory boards overseeing cultural policy. SLAV’s public funders, the Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec must both consult with and dedicate funding to Black and Indigenous people and other people of colour, they write.

The authors then turn their attention to the Montreal public and Quebec media that praised and defended the show, saying they must educate themselves about racial injustice. They also called on media companies to start hiring people of colour, including Black and Indigenous people, and provide space for critical race discussion.

Before the show was cancelled, SLAV’s director Robert Lepage and Bonifassi said in a joint statement on Facebook, "Yes, the history of slavery, in all its various forms, belongs first and foremost to those who have been oppressed and to the descendants of those people.”

"Diversity and its artistic potential are at the heart of SLAV as much as the legacy of slavery. Do we have the right to tell these stories? Audience members will have the opportunity to decide after having seen the show."

Following the show’s cancellation, Bonifassi said on Facebook she had been in hospital with a foot and ankle fracture since Thursday, under heavy medication, and she will speak about the show as soon as she physically can.

“All of this was beyond me, I never wanted any of this,” she said in the post.

In its statement, the festival said “inclusion and reconciliation between communities are essential” and it made the decision with Bonifassi to cancel all performances at the festival.

While the festival said it will continue to support emerging artists and diverse music, the statement did not mention Doudou Boicel .

Ticketholders will be refunded, the festival said.

Cover image: Elias Djemil-Matassov/Ex Machina