Over 80 artists sign open letter urging Sónar to distance itself from KKR

More than 80 artists have signed an open letter urging Sónar to distance itself from the investment firm KKR, the owner of the Spanish festival’s parent company Superstruct Enertainment. 

The Barcelona event is one of 80 festivals owned by Superstruct Entertainment, which has been majority-owned by the private equity firm KKR since last year. As the open letter states: “KKR holds significant investments in companies arming and supporting Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. This association directly contradicts the ethical values that many artists and audiences hold.”

The letter also voices its opposition to two of Sónar’s sponsors: Coca-Cola and McDonald’s product McFlurry. Both are official targets of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The open letter has specifically called on the team running Sónar to publicly distance the festival from KKR’s complicit investments in Israel; adopt ethical policies for programming and partnerships; respect BDS guidelines; and engage transparently with artists and others who are raising this issue with them.

The letter states: “As artists committed to justice and creative integrity, we believe silence is not an option. Our industry must not be a vehicle for normalising or whitewashing state violence. The complicity of international institutions — including corporations and cultural platforms — is a key enabler of this atrocity. We therefore take a collective stand to oppose any affiliation between the cultural sector and entities complicit in war crimes.” 

Among the signees of the letter are Objekt, Loraine James, Ikonika, Juliana Huxtable, Brodinski, Animistic Beliefs, Kode9, Dis Fig, Peder Mannerfelt, Shannen SP, DJ Haram and Florentino. You can read the letter via the Instagram posts embedded below. 

Sónar released a statement yesterday (Thursday, 15th May), describing the festival as “a platform that promotes diversity, inclusion and respects the freedom of expression of its artists, participants and collaborators.”

It continued: “The Sónar team has always worked and will always work with the premise of promoting respect for universal human rights. The festival strongly condemns all forms of violence.”

Sónar’s statement doesn’t mention Superstruct, KKR, Israel or Palestine, and has drawn criticism from artists and other figures. BDS said the statement was “clearly insufficient to undo the harm caused by its involuntary complicity through its ownership structure. Sónar can and must do better than mere platitudes about abstract human rights.”

A number of artists have also cancelled their scheduled appearance at this year’s festival as a result of its connection to KKR. Among them are Juliana Huxtable, ABADIR and Animistic Beliefs.

Announcing her withdrawal from the festival, Huxtable said: “The KKR encroachment into music is terrifying given what this means for profits tied directly to the genocide in Palestine, but also to the expropriation of indigenous land for natural resource exploitation, arms manufacturing etc.”

ABADIR said: “After exhausting private routes to address the concerns, and following PACBI’s call for boycotting and/or pressuring Sónar and all Superstruct-owned events, I feel that I can no longer in good conscience play at Sónar.”

Animistic Beliefs said: “We know no space is free from contradiction. But somewhere the line has to be drawn. Maybe you’ve felt something like that too. For us, it stops here.”

The protest action against Sónar follows the news that a number of artists had cancelled their appearances at London’s Field Day, another Superstruct-owned event, earlier this week. 

Several artists had previously signed an open letter addressed to Field Day, which the festival did not engage with for a number of weeks.