Jonny Greenwood & Dudu Tassa UK shows cancelled amid protests from BDS Movement
Those supporting the cultural boycott of Israel say the shows would have "artwashed genocide" The post Jonny Greenwood & Dudu Tassa UK shows cancelled amid protests from BDS Movement appeared first on NME.
Jonny Greenwood has seen two UK shows with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa cancelled after protests from the BDS movement.
The Radiohead guitarist has played a handful of shows with Tassa in Tel Aviv over the last two years, most recently in March this year. After a pair of similar shows last year, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, described the events as “artwashing genocide”.
The pair were due to play two shows in the UK next month, at Bristol’s Beacon on June 23 and London’s Hackney Church on June 25. However, it has been confirmed in recent days that both shows have now been cancelled.
Responding to the first gig being called off, PACBI wrote on X: “Palestinians welcome the cancellation of Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s concert, which was due to take place in Bristol, UK on the 23rd June and would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide against 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime.”
Palestinians welcome the cancellation of Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s concert, which was due to take place in Bristol, UK on the 23rd June and would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide against 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime. pic.twitter.com/PE12H1ohVL
— PACBI – BDS movement (@PACBI) May 1, 2025
On Friday (May 2), they also reacted to the second show’s cancellation: “UPDATE: Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s show at Hackney Church has also been cancelled. Palestinians welcome the cancellation of both of their UK shows. We reiterate our call for all venues to refuse to programme this complicit event that can only artwash genocide.”
UPDATE: Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa's show at Hackney Church has also been cancelled. Palestinians welcome the cancellation of both of their UK shows. We reiterate our call for all venues to refuse to programme this complicit event that can only artwash genocide. https://t.co/ne2TDXCKds
— PACBI – BDS movement (@PACBI) May 2, 2025
Neither Greenwood nor Tassa have publicly responded to the news of the shows being called off.
Greenwood’s wife, the artist Sharona Katan, is Israeli. Their family had a nephew who was serving in the Israeli Defense Forces and was killed in the ongoing war against Hamas.
Reacting to the controversy after last year’s Tel Aviv shows, Greenwood wrote: “I’ve been collaborating with Dudu and releasing music with him since 2008 – and working privately long before that. I think an artistic project that combines Arab and Jewish musicians is worthwhile. And one that reminds everyone that the Jewish cultural roots in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back for thousands of years, is also important.”
“Anyway, no art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us. How can it be? But doing nothing seems a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.
Greenwood concluded: “So: that’s why I’m making music with this band. You’re welcome to disagree with, or ignore, what we do but I hope you now understand what the true motivation is, and can react to the music without suspicion or hate.”
PACBI said in a response provided to NME: “By performing in apartheid Tel Aviv while Israeli forces burned Palestinians alive in Rafah, Gaza – a fact he conveniently omits from his letter – Jonny Greenwood is knowingly complicit in covering up these atrocities. No progressive music fan can accept this.
“All Palestinian/Arab musicians should refuse to act as figleaves for international artists crossing the Palestinian picket line – or for Israeli artists who have entertained Israeli forces massacring Palestinians, as Greenwood’s collaborator Dudu Tassa has repeatedly done.”
Greenwood and Tassa released the collaborative album ‘Jarak Qaribak’ in 2023, an Arabic title that translates as “Your Neighbour Is Your Friend”. The album was made up of traditional Middle Eastern love songs, recorded with a range of musicians playing modern interpretations.
Radiohead have performed in Israel numerous times throughout their career and their show there in 2017 proved especially controversial.
The band faced calls to cancel the gig, with an open letter issued by Artists For Palestine UK – and signed by musicians including Roger Waters, Thurston Moore and Young Fathers, as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu – asking the group to “think again” about their decision amid an ongoing and widespread cultural boycott of the country.
Radiohead Fans for Palestine also wrote, in an open letter to Thom Yorke, “it is the Palestinian people who have asked you to boycott and if you’re going to justify your show in Tel Aviv it is them you should be addressing.”
At a solo show in Australia in October, Yorke clashed with an apparently pro-Palestinian protester. “Come up and say that. Right here,” he said in response to the heckler. “Come up on the fucking stage and say what you want to say. But don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. Come on.”
“You want to piss on everybody’s night? Come on. OK, you do. See you later then,” he added, departing the stage.
Meanwhile, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien called for a ceasefire in Gaza last year. “Like so many of you I have found the events of October 7 and what has followed too awful for words.. anything that I have tried to write feels so utterly inadequate. Ceasefire now. Return the hostages,” he wrote on Instagram.
The post Jonny Greenwood & Dudu Tassa UK shows cancelled amid protests from BDS Movement appeared first on NME.
