The organizers said that “music should be outside of politics.”
The Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra refused participation in the Sea Dance Festival in Montenegro due to the reluctance of the organizers to cancel the performance of the Russian DJ Nina Kravitz, who is accused of sympathizing with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The press service of the band notes that when the organizers of the festival offered the Kalush Orchestra to perform in Montenegro, there was no talk of performing on the same stage with Nina Kravitz, so the band accepted the invitation of the organizers. But when DJ Nina Kravitz unexpectedly appeared in the lineup, they demanded that the festival organizers cancel her performance.
On August 11, the Kalush Orchestra reported that the organizers refused to cancel the performance of the Russian singer, saying that “the music should be outside politics”.
“We will not perform with a pro-Putin Russian artist on the same stage. At the band's request, the organizers refused to cancel Nina Kravitz's performance. Therefore, as promised, we are canceling our performance there,” commented the Kalush Orchestra's leader Oleg Psyuk on the decision.
On Instagram, the leader of the band added that the band has no “desire to perform on the same stage” with Nina Kravitz. That's why the band is “melting itself”, urging not to buy tickets for this festival on the 28th in Montenegro to everyone who wanted to attend the performance of the Kalush Orchestra.
Sea Dance Festival is a festival that will take place from August 26 to 28 in Montenegro, it is one of the projects of the organizers of the Serbian EXIT festival. On August 6, the festival published a poster with a breakdown by day. It follows that on August 28 Kalush Orchestra should perform together with Nina Kravitz.
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Nina Kravitz is a Russian producer, DJ and singer, which is accused of sympathizing with the president of the aggressor country, Vladimir Putin. For example, at the Coachella festival shortly after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Kravitz performed with a cardboard figure of the Russian president.
After the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, the DJ did not directly oppose the aggression. On May 17, Kravitz wrote a post in which she said she “doesn't understand the policies and processes she creates on social media” and doesn't “think it's appropriate to discuss what's happening on social media because it can increase hate and doesn't promote understanding”.
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At the end of May, Nina Kravitz was excluded from the lineups of three festivals: The Crave in the Netherlands, Movement Music Festival in the USA and PollerWiesen in Germany.
