Roger Waters
Photo: Getty Images, Vittorio Zunino Celotto. All rights reserved.
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The European tour “This Is Not A Drill” takes its course without any particular excitement. After starting in Lisbon on March 17, 2023, Roger Waters will play in Copenhagen’s “Royal Arena” tomorrow, Tuesday (April 11). The live portal of the event agency “Live Nation” announces “few tickets left” on the corresponding website. So arena concerts as usual, for the Pink Floyd co-founder, who is particularly controversial in Germany, and who celebrates his 80th birthday on September 6, 2023.
Waters has now filed a lawsuit for the guest performance on May 28 in Frankfurt’s Festhalle, which was canceled by local politicians. The urgent application to the Frankfurt Administrative Court is directed against the shareholders of the local trade fair company. According to the TV news program “Hessenschau”, Waters refers to the freedom of art and freedom of expression. In turn, the city and state accuse the old master of aggressive anti-Semitism. All other Germany concerts in Hamburg, Cologne. Berlin and Munich will take place as planned. Local protests are still to be expected.
In the rather lukewarm reporting of the Danish daily press on Waters’ Copenhagen concert, reference is made to the ongoing campaign for Kurdish musician Nûdem Durak. Durak has been imprisoned since April 2015, i.e. for exactly eight years – after she was sentenced to 19 years in prison in two separate trials for allegedly performing Kurdish songs “with political content”.
After Waters sent her one of his guitars as part of a solidarity action last year, it was held back by the prison administration in the city of Mêrdîn (Turkish: Mardin). Under the title “A Campaign for a New Trial”, colleagues such as Marianne Faithful, Noel Gallagher, Pink Floyd colleague Nick Mason, Peter Gabriel, the American intellectual Noam Chomsky and the British film director Ken Loach also signed the stage instrument set.
The first solidarity campaign started in Germany in 2016 with the “Song for Nûdem Durak”. In an Instagram video, Waters said: “She’s not a terrorist, she’s a singer/songwriter. She is our sister”.
After the local prison administration refused to hand over the instrument to Durak, Waters announced a solidarity visit. His last public statement in this case is a YouTube video from December 17, 2022. Insiders assume that Waters will emphatically refer to this fight for freedom, which he supports, at his controversial concerts in German halls in order to avoid the allegations made against him of repeated anti-Semitism. Before the first Germany concert in four weeks, on May 7th in the “Barclays Arena” in Hamburg, the pugnacious multi-millionaire continues to paint his dazzling self-image.
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