Macklemore has cancelled a planned concert in Dubai. The Hind Hall rapper, 41, made the announcement in a lengthy Instagram post on Saturday.
Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, known by his stage name Macklemore, said fans made him feel the need to “take stock of the situation.”
“Over the past few months, several people have reached out to me asking me to share resources, cancel shows in solidarity with the people of Sudan, and boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis in the region. It was important for me to learn and really get to grips with the situation,” the second image he shared in his Slider post read. The American rapper acknowledged that the decision to pull out could lead to difficulties in the future.
“My decision to cancel the Dubai show comes from here. I know this decision jeopardizes future shows in the region and I would hate to disappoint my fans, who were very excited too. However, I will not be performing there until the UAE stops providing arms and funding to the RSF.”
He also called on other celebrities planning to perform in Dubai to think about their choices.
“I don’t mean to criticise other artists performing in the UAE, but I ask my peers who are planning to perform in Dubai: what could we achieve if we used our platforms to mobilise collective liberation?”
Additionally, in the carousel, he spoke at length about the catastrophe in Sudan, highlighting the region struggling with mass displacement, hunger, sexual violence and a skyrocketing death toll to 150,000.
“At the end of the day, I have to ask myself what my intentions are as an artist,” he asks.
He noted that he had once been one of those people “conditioned to be indifferent to any issue other than his own personal needs,” and questioned his power as an individual to effect change.
“For a long time I’ve lived with a shrug that said, ‘The world is a mess, but I’m going to put my sack on, what can we as individuals do to change it?’ We’ve been conditioned to be willfully indifferent to any issues outside of our own personal needs,” the fifth slide read.
He stressed that the systematic oppression in West Asia that “woke the world” cannot be eliminated in his lifetime, but that a “collective analysis” is still evolving across generations.
“We are now called to speak up for the most marginalized people around the world, to set aside our own luxury and abundance and collectively pursue freedom and security for all. What risks are we willing to take to uproot a system that relies on genocide for financial gain?” According to foreign press agencies, the UAE denies allegations that it has sent weapons to RSF paramilitaries in Sudan, but it is widely considered an “open secret”.