The Montreal International Jazz Festival has cancelled a controversial performance piece called Slav, in which mostly white actors dressed up as cotton pickers and field workers sing African American slave songs.

Directed by Robert Lepage, with just two actors of color involved, the show premiered last week at the 10-day festival and lasted two performances before backlash and protests shuttered the production, billed as “a theatrical odyssey based on slave songs”. It starred Betty Bonifassi, a white, French-born vocalist whose debut album Chill’em All was based on work songs sung by chain gangs in the American south.

‘Break walls and open doors’: Robert Lepage on the cold war, theatre and sibling rivalry Read more

The festival, the world’s largest for jazz music, released a statement on Wednesday responding to the outcry over Slav, which was scheduled for 16 shows and had sold 8,000 tickets. “For the Festival international de Jazz de Montreal, inclusion and reconciliation between communities is essential,” it said, adding that the festival “has been shaken and strongly affected by all comments received”.

One of those comments came from singer-songwriter Moses Sumney, who was scheduled to perform at the festival but pulled out over its endorsement of the show, which drew protests outside the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, where it was being staged. In an open letter to the festival’s programmers, he explained his decision.

Moses Sumney (@MosesSumney) Regarding our Montreal show: pic.twitter.com/I8dr7OM8SA

“To be frank, I don’t think Betty Bonifassi, Robert Lepage or MTL Jazz Fest are authorities on race,” wrote Sumney, who released the letter on his Tumblr page. “I don’t even think I am an authority on race, and I’m an actual African American with a second degree in African American studies. However to try to tell us why it is okay for white people to take slave songs and repurpose them as they see fit is to imply not only that you are authorities on the topic, but also that you know better than us about our own pain and culture and history.”



Pierre Kwenders, a Congolese Canadian musician scheduled to perform at the festival tomorrow, joined the protests, which saw the Montreal chapter of Black Lives Matter and other activists, like the local artist Lucas Charlie Rose, gather outside the venue holding signs that read “racist” and “white culture is theft”. The multilingual hip-hop group Nomadic Massive expressed disapproval over Slav in other ways, appearing in T-shirt thats read “faites mieux” (“do better”) during their outdoor show at the festival on Monday night.

While Kwenders called Slav “insensitive and disrespectful”, others came out in defense of the show including the black French actor Frédéric Pierre, who in a Facebook post encouraged attendees to “stop feeding the beast” and “let the white artists be touched and moved by black history and the songs it generated”.

Pierre Kwenders (@pierrekwenders) #SLAV has been cancelled and i couldnt be happier. Merci à tous pour la support. La voix du peuple ne peut être ignorée. I will be celebrating this friday during my show at @MtlJazzFestival ✊🏾join me!

Before Slav opened, the festival’s organizers doubled down on the production, thanking Bonifassi and Lepage for choosing Montreal as the site of the show’s world premiere. “Before subjecting them to trial by public opinion,” the festival said, “we firmly believe that we must wait and witness the show they will present to us all.”

Widespread disapproval of the show’s content, however, caused them to reverse course. Aly Ndiaye, a Quebec-based hip-hop artist who acted as a paid consultant on Slav, sharing with Lepage his knowledge of slavery and its history in Quebec, wrote in an op-ed that he was “deeply uncomfortable by the lack of diversity on stage”. He added: “Nothing can justify the failure to hire black singers or actresses for the project.”

Sophia Sahrane, a member of the protest group Slav Resistance Collective, which sent out a letter stating its opposition to the production, told the Globe and Mail that “we also need to look into the culture that allowed for this show to exist”. Signed by over 1,500 “concerned Montrealers”, the letter stated that Slav and the racial imbalance in its casting “perpetuates the historical exploitation and marginalization of black populations in Quebec and the world over”.

Lepage, an award-winning French Canadian director and playwright whose works often tackle social injustice, has yet to respond to Slav’s cancellation.