Fact #157073
When:
Short story:
Electronic musician Nicolas Jaar plays at The Block, Tel Aviv, Israel.Full article:
Ben Rafson, manager) : Nico has a substantial fanbase throughout the Middle East and his father’s family is Palestinian. It was important to Nico on this touring cycle, to play in both Israel and Palestine back to back, which is politically a very difficult thing to achieve. Usually if an artist does anything in Israel, BDS won’t allow him to play in Palestine. But David is on the board of The Creative Community For Peace, and he worked his ass off on this project. We found a promoter who we thought might be able to achieve this and through a ton of research we got permission from a high-ranking member of the BDS to play in both Haifa, Israel, and Ramallah, Palestine. We played two shows in Haifa for 250 people each, Ramallah was for 1000 people in Palestine. And the following night we played to a thousand in Amman, the capital of Jordan, which is a totally new territory for William Morris, and David oversaw all of that.
David was totally supportive and in the months it took to set it up, he went to Israel a couple of times meeting people, doing research, and in the end he made it all happen.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience, October 2017)
Milo Cordell (promoter, The Young Turks) : Nico is very very particular about sound and venues and promoters and so many things.
Nico is very politically and culturally aware, and he has a very wide footprint, meaning he can sell tickets anywhere in the world, and we told our agent, David Levy at WME, that we’d like to play in Palestine on the West Bank. Nico has a Palestinian bloodline. Obviously David is Jewish, so that made it interesting. But David just got on with it, put us in touch with partisan companies that we could talk to if we had issues and he made sure everything was as cool as it could be.
Politically it was tricky because we had to talk to various bodies because if you play in Israel it can be hard to be allowed into Palestine, but David dealt with all of it and made it possible.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience, October 2017)
Tweet this Fact
David was totally supportive and in the months it took to set it up, he went to Israel a couple of times meeting people, doing research, and in the end he made it all happen.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience, October 2017)
Milo Cordell (promoter, The Young Turks) : Nico is very very particular about sound and venues and promoters and so many things.
Nico is very politically and culturally aware, and he has a very wide footprint, meaning he can sell tickets anywhere in the world, and we told our agent, David Levy at WME, that we’d like to play in Palestine on the West Bank. Nico has a Palestinian bloodline. Obviously David is Jewish, so that made it interesting. But David just got on with it, put us in touch with partisan companies that we could talk to if we had issues and he made sure everything was as cool as it could be.
Politically it was tricky because we had to talk to various bodies because if you play in Israel it can be hard to be allowed into Palestine, but David dealt with all of it and made it possible.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience, October 2017)