On June 29, singer/songwriter Sting, former co-founder
and front man of the massively successful rock band The Police, and now one of
the biggest solo artists in the world, headlined the Life Festival Oświęcim 2013 at Poland’s MOSiR Stadium in Oświęcim, which
also just happens to be the location of Auschwitz. That’s right – there is now an
annual rock festival literally within
earshot of the most infamous
testament to genocidal evil in human history.
Life Festival Oswiecim (LFO) was the brainchild of Darek
Maciborek, a journalist who has lived his whole life in the little Polish town
(pop. 41,000 as of 2006). Maciborek hoped to “break the spell” of his
hometown’s morbid association with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Or as a Polish cultural guide explains, “The music festival
was created to demonstrate that there is more to the small city of Oświęcim
than just the Auschwitz concentration camp, and to create more positive
connections in the minds of visiting tourists.”
While I think Maciborek’s heart is
in the right place, I can’t help feeling that making those connections will end
up reducing Auschwitz itself to simply another stop on tourists’ checklists:
Morning: Arrive
in Oświęcim, get settled in hotel. Have lunch at the Polish equivalent of
Denny’s.
Afternoon: Visit
the site of the mass extermination of Jews and other Nazi undesirables.
Evening:
“Roxanne” sing-along with Sting!
This is well-meaning, but if one
of the festival’s goals is to bring awareness to the issues of intolerance, racism
and anti-Semitism, Auschwitz itself already
does a spectacular job of that. And the silence of Auschwitz says far more
than ringing waves of amplified guitars.
Sting’s not the first major artist to perform at the Life Festival, which
began in 2010. Peter Gabriel (“Sledgehammer,” “In Your Eyes”) headlined last
year’s incarnation, and the year before that it was James Blunt (“You’re
Beautiful”). Blunt incurred the wrath of many thousands of fans on that
occasion when he posted a photo that could charitably be described as a
bizarrely inappropriate joke about the location.
Sting has performed in the wake of horrific violence before. In 2001, he and
his band were actually in the process of filming a private performance at his
home in Italy when the 9/11 attacks took place. The sobering news prompted
Sting to offer his bandmates the chance to back out if anyone wished, but all
agreed that the show must go on. Sting dedicated the resulting album and the
evening’s opening song – a somber version of “Fragile” – to the victims. That
song’s plea for peace, however – “nothing comes from violence, and nothing ever
could” – seemed aimed at preventing retaliation, but might have been better
directed at the terrorists themselves instead.
Sometimes violence is necessary. Despite being lovers of great music, the Nazis
weren’t defeated by singers at music festivals calling for tolerance and coexistence.
They were defeated by overwhelming military power.
You can check out a video from the
festival here,
in which Sting performs his biggest hit and what has become his rousing concert-closer
(despite the fact that the lyrics are the ominous promise of an obsessive
stalker): “Every Breath You Take.”
Though the crowd didn’t seem to mind, I can’t help feeling that rocking out to
this upbeat anthem in the shadow of Auschwitz is, to put it in musical terms,
tonally jarring.
It’s hard to condemn Sting and the festival’s other performers, though. Preaching
peace and tolerance is what pop musicians do, even if they tend to gloss over the
tough reality of ensuring peace and
eradicating intolerance. It’s just a lot harder to enjoy the music if the
musician is tone-deaf.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 7/9//13)
