Jazz Against The Machine Festival Disinvites and then Reinvites Angelica Summer to a Panel on Music and Politics

Written on 26.01.2024: I got invited to speak at a panel on Music and politics – our responsibility as musicians as part of the Jazz Against The Machine festival at Artheater on February 1, 2024. I was delighted to speak on this topic. My music and art have always been political and I have always been proud of speaking up for human rights issues.

You should know how political I am, especially if you have seen my art – my YouTube channel is filled with songs criticizing the government, my concerts with The Strawberry Finns have always included improvisations and comments on the current political situation.

I was being told I would be the only openly queer person on the panel and that the focus should be on AfD. I pointed out that AfD isn't the only political topic – that it includes in itself CDU, CSU, FDP and The Greens, the policy of the German government and, obviously, Palestine and Israel. I was being told that this matter would be discussed with the team and they would get back to me.

Within a few days I was told that they were worried that this topic needs its separate panel, that there is no time to organize such and that they didn't want the topic to be sweeped under the rug in this panel, since the focus was different. But this explanation simply makes no sense to me. I'm afraid something horrible and really scary is happening to artists in Germany right now. We're seeing censorship disguised as political debates and as 'democracy'. Having cute, safe, sterile political debates about politics in music, intentionally focusing only on AfD, damages the real discussion about racism, Palestine and German policies, especially the new law for deportations of migrants voted by The Ampel coalition.

We need real, serious, heavy debates about politics and music, about racism and freedom of speech. I'm boycotting Jazz Against The Machine and so should you, because to me it's not against the machine. It's a part of the machine.

Update on 28.01.2024: I had a phone conversation with one of the organizers of the panel. It turns out the reason I was disinvited was that there was pressure from a member of HfMT (Hochschule für Musik und Theater) who said if a pro-Palestine person would be invited, so should a pro-Israel person be invited. The organizers didn’t comply. They invited me again and suggested we stick to the original idea of the panel with the possibility of mentioning Palestine, but I declined the offer. I suggested that I give my place to someone else and that they invite Faed Shadid, a Palestinian musician who’s also a student from HfMT.

In the end they did take my suggestion into consideration. They invited the Palestinian music student from HfMT to speak on the topic with the other participants at the panel.