Change.org reported yesterday that concert promoter Live Nation has canceled Buju Binton’s concert at the House of Blues in October. Live Nation was under fire by the people at Change who protested Live Nation’s involvement with the Jamaician dancehall musician and petitioned members to boycott the promoters. Binton is notorious for including severely homophobic remarks in his songs.
Live Nation announced the cancellation yesterday which included his Dallas and Houston shows, both at House of Blues.
Kettle Art owner and artist Frank Campagna paints the concert panels House of Blues posts outside. He read about the cancellation today from the Advocate. “I painted this sucker for them and now it’s no good. And that’s just fine because obviously he’s no good,” Campagna said.
Please file him under Straight Men We Love.
Amazing to see that Texas leads the way in progressive suppression of hate related violent lyrics. Its even more amazing that a Black man would sing that stuff about burning people to death.
Me thinks Buju doth protesteth too much !!! Do the guys in Jamaica who don’t have their “own” woman all need to put up a front?
uh, 2 things:
1st, frank is one of dallas’ unsung heroes in the arts community. his work is fantastic and he’s a helluva guy to boot and he was already on the straight men we love list in my book, rich.
2nd, frank reads the advocate?
HA! @ Brian. No, he was searching for something else and came across the story and mentioned it to me.
A message from GLN, the organization spearheading this effort:
Protest WORKS!
Live Nation Cancels
Performer Who Calls for Killing Gays
Late yesterday afternoon huge concert promoter Live Nation announced that it was canceling all its concerts with “kill gays” performer Buju Banton. This includes House of Blues concerts previously scheduled for Chicago (10/2), Las Vegas (10/15), Dallas (10/20) and Houston (10/22).
In early August, Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network initiated a campaign for Live Nation and other concert promoters to cancel Buju Banton concerts because the performer calls for killing Lesbians and Gays in the lyrics of his songs. Thousands of flyers were distributed and protest messages started to pour into Live Nation officials.
“Live Nation, owner of four House of Blues locations at which ‘kill gays’ singer Buju Banton was scheduled to appear, has done the right thing and canceled the hate monger,” said Bob Schwartz of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network. “These cancellations show the power of protest to deliver the goods,” said Schwartz, who has led several protests against “murder music” performers over the years.
Schwartz had written Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino to demand that Banton not be rewarded with bookings for advocating the murder of lesbians and gay men. “We first wrote Live Nation several years ago following their purchase of House of Blues to alert them to the Jamaican Reggae ‘Dancehall’ singers who advocated killing gays, and had thought we wouldn’t have to go down this road again. We hope they have finally gotten the message,” said Schwartz.
honestly this pisses me off to no end. i’m a huge dancehall fan and i grew up inside of the LGBT community. this argument has been going on since the early 90’s and nothing has changed. they don’t care if their US shows get cancelled; they get all their money from shows and sales on the island anyways.
in my mind, as long as the artists are not actually instigating violence here in the nightclubs, they should be allowed to say whatever the hell they want. how is this any different from heterophobic hardcore bands like cult ritual or middle america talking about killing “breeders” or death metal bands talking about massacring hordes of women for sexual gratification? granted, jamaica actually has a problem with anti-gay violence, and i don’t think that this music helps, but the music is NOT the cause of the violence – rather it’s an outgrowth of a staunchly conservative culture that’s pumped full of alpha male ideology. if you want to make a change, instead of outright banning something that you don’t like, why don’t you do what many other american dancehall fans have done and go to the shows and TALK to the artists and tell them: “i love your music, i love it when you focus on the struggles we all face, when you talk about reality in a raw way, but the homophobic ideas really bother me.” sean paul and vybz kartel both offered public apologies after a number of fans did exactly that.
i personally could care less either way – i love the music and i love the artists, even if i don’t agree with some of their messages, i can still appreciate and value the sacred nature of their creativity and passion.
so thanks for spoiling the opportunity for a large number of people to enjoy a style of music they so rarely get to come into contact with. i’m sure it just makes dancehall musicians want to embrace the community so much more. by the way, you can’t force your ideology onto someone else, and they can’t force theirs on you, in case you forgot.
well yeah but that’s just the point. If he can express his ideology then so can the business owner. Hating on people is a no win situation whatever style of music you play. No one is forcing any ideology, in fact it’s the opposite. This is a perfectly legitimate tactic of non-cooperative protest against an oppressive way of thinking. He shouldn’t have spread his anti gay views around if he didn’t want the backlash. Blame him, because he’s responsible for the consequences of his poor judgment.