The Young Fathers sound a bit like gospel singers who have long been locked up in a church -- and have now been released into freedom, into a world of unlimited possibilities, but also one filled with many truths and conflicts. They sing about identity and power, violence and war, love and sex. And often about God and the devil.
It is the music of doubtful young men, one white and two black, a Scottish pop group in the digital postmodern era. Critics have dubbed them "the most interesting newish band in the English-speaking world," and Stefanie Carp, the new artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, an annual music and cultural festival in Germany's Ruhr region, was proud when she succeeded in booking the Young Fathers for a concert. In a cheerful announcement, organizers of the festival, which begins in August, described the group's music as "genre-defying."
But it's possible that the band member's political views may indeed fit into a category -- and not a nice one: anti-Semitism. The mere question as to whether they can be classified as such has been the subject of considerable controversy and the debate is creating problems for Carp, with some journalists and politicians demanding her resignation. Last week, The New York Times even reported on the case. The story's tone: The criticism of the festival has little to do with the band's music, but much to do with German history.
The Young Fathers view themselves as anti-establishment. They send out tweets against right-wing demonstrations, they appear at rallies organized by the Unite Against Fascism group, they demand that Britain rid itself of nuclear weapons and they champion the cause of taking in refugees. There haven't been any accusations so far of the group expressing themselves in any anti-Semitic way on their records or during their live performances, but they have joined at least two campaigns of the BDS movement.
Founded in 2005 by more than 100 Palestinian civil society groups, the BDS movement advocates for the rights of Palestinians and campaigns against the Israeli state. The abbreviation BDS stands for the movement's strategy: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The movement is modeled after the campaign against the apartheid state in South Africa in the 1980s. The difference, though, is that the white Boer government was a racist regime, while an altogether different dynamic is the culprit for the situation in Israel: the country's location at the center of an Islamic world that has been hostile toward it from the very beginning as well as the historical experience of the Holocaust.
One of the most prominent representatives of the BDS movement is Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame. Waters and many other musicians, including the Young Fathers, led a campaign in 2017 aimed at getting the British rock band Radiohead to cancel a planned concert in Tel Aviv. Boycott calls like that are typical of BDS, with the movement aiming to isolate Israel culturally. Radiohead resisted and went on to play the concert, triggering a storm of controversy that even saw the band get booed onstage at the Glastonbury Festival. The band described the pressure that had been placed on it at the time as "deeply distressing."
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