The Black bourgeoisie booty don’t lie as their coldheartedness bundled with the white elite towards the working-class and struggling youth pops out the closet while selfishly reaching its musical climax with the fourth edition of Curacao North Sea Jazz festival together with Dutch + Latino wealthy locals and tourists from mostly the Netherlands, Suriname and South America. A festival that boosts our economy with approximately $40 million. A personal investment of +/- $5 million by the creator, offshore czar Gregory Elias. A multi-millionaire with a philantropic sway, wanting to see his island get that tourist money during off-season.
This years roster like all the previous ones has a big U.S. Black artists presence. Names like Prince, Gladys Knight, Diana Ross, Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, Erykah Badu, The Roots and Raphael Saadiq. The Black and white creole elite just like the Curacao International Film Festival Rotterdam (also organized by Gregory Elias) had no interest in promoting the U.S. Black artists to the Black working-class and youth through radio, tv or social media channels. Its been like that all these four years plus there has never been one marketing campaign aimed at African-American tourists which instantly could make this event a profitable one as it still never ever broke even all these years.
The reason why they prefer not to target the U.S. Black tourism market
is not that clear but it evidently is galvanized in racial motives resembling the whole -mostly white dominated- tourism sector of Curacao that has a gigantic Blackness-phobia tattoed on its Dutch colonized face. They spend millions on Dutch and German tourists but refuse to invest in the Black diaspora living in the United States who with the right tailor made marketing would come to visit and feel home away from home.
Artists based in Holland that were born here or grew up like Kris Berry and Kizzy McHugh should engage with the Black working class and youth from disadvantaged neigbourhoods or at least lace DJ’s with promo songs to start and maintain their tunes buzzing. Make them understand what that Jazz sound is all about expand their love for other sorts of music.
Percy Pinedo the PR-man for the Jazz fest mentioned that people should be educated on different genres of music, if Elias really wants to start seeing revenues stream his way he need to broaden his so-called philantropical horizon and cater to the struggling labor class, introduce them via radio, tv to all types of music that play gigs at festivals like these.
Four years straight consistently the organization has been willfully neglecting the working-class, 95% will not save money to buy a $195 ticket (one evening) even if rough economic times allows them to. Obviously most people never heard of Raphael Saadiq, they dont know who The Roots are and can’t recite any Erykah Badu lyric or hum an Esperanza joint simply because media platforms dont play their music and festival organizers until now never saw the value in schooling Black poor folks to these ‘new’ U.S. Black musical sounds. Thats why they be at ‘TRAP NIGHT’, Facade, Hot and Nasty or a Bubblin party at open air brothel Campo Alegre. No, they wont go to a Jazz fest after party in Renaissance even if Questlove from the Roots will be on the one and two’s spinning wax. Probably that’s the organizers goal too, to keep the class apartheid intact.
Making it worse as it is already is the disappointment that U.S. Black artists like The Roots and Erykah Badu turned out to be. Listening to their music you would seem to feel as if they know whats up with the Black experience in the Caribbean and that we still are going through our decolonial battles. Radical waves of social consciousness via their musical presence during a concert filled with white and Black elite and organizers camp would have a great influence on their creole capitalism characters. They could’ve blessed the audience with just a few powerful songs, raps that could raise Black awareness, solidarity on our voyage of emancipation this complex exodus from Dutch Apartheid, colonialism, class cleansing, homophobia, sexism, anti- Black feminism, anti-Black racism.
Maybe its too early to judge but so far it just look like they came out to play, cash a check and take a plane to go the next show. The rapper from the Roots, Black Thought in Styles P collabo track ‘Cause I’m Black’ rhymed: “I got a mind like Malcolm X, how about yours?” People want to see that state of mind, Erykah Badu also in her music shows off with that Black revolutionary flair. The Black working class and youth of Curacao would have loved to see and hear that particular mental glow but instead you got these artists doing a ‘watered down’ show for middle and upperclass folks without any effort of leaving a mark of social change as ambassadors of Black radical thought.
Harry Belafonte who had to do open the fest with an UNICEF anti-child poverty speech recently reminded U.S. Black artists Jay-Z and Beyonce to get that social activism work in. How much of Belafonte’s words will sow seeds into the Black and white bourgeousie hearts of Curacao? These artists need to stay woke when they cross the U.S. border and stop compromising their integrity, discontinue neglecting the sufferation of the Black diaspora in the Caribbean.
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[?] So after years and years touring the Netherlands and Curacao, these U.S. Black artists never ever commented or made a song about the Dutch racist tradition of Blackface Zwarte Piet.
Triunfo di Sablika 