Earlier this year, M.I.A made waves, again, by talking critically to London’s Evening Standard about the Black Lives Matter movement. When leaders of the movement spoke out against her, there was a push to have her removed from London’s Afropunk festival, and M.I.A. had tweeted that she had decided to pull out, as she had been told to “stay in her lane.” Now, after all this back-and-forth, the festival has issued a statement defending M.I.A., and claims that she will perform at the festival in September.
It all started in April, with this quote from the Evening Standard , which had asked M.I.A. about Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance:
It’s interesting that in America the problem you’re allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter. It’s not a new thing to me — it’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters? That’s a more interesting question. And you cannot ask it on a song that’s on Apple, you cannot ask it on an American TV programme, you cannot create that tag on Twitter, Michelle Obama is not going to hump you back.’
DeRay Mckesson and Johnette Elzie, both prominent representatives of the Black Lives Matter movement, criticized her comments, especially the use of the word “allow” in terms of speaking about Black Lives Matter.
M.I.A. eventually tweeted, more than a month later, that she was pulling out of the festival:
But now, with this statement from Afropunk, it doesn’t seem that’s the case. The festival released a long statement, which you can read in its entirety below. The defense of M.I.A.’s statements can be boiled down to this line, though: “To us, the fact that M.I.A.’s comments sparked dialogue about a global view of the Black struggle is not a failing.” The statement also talks of the refugee crisis in Europe and the need to discuss the way the Black Lives Matter movement intersects with racially charged political rhetoric happening in the U.S.
Afropunk London is on September 24. Read the statement below:
