The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited venezuelan Classical Music Star Gustavo Dudamel to appear at the Oscars.
This is a terribly tone deaf gesture by an organization that forced a shamed Kevin Hart, an african-american comedian to resign as host for a homophobic joke he made a decade before.
But in the face of a country in the throes of starvation, death and destruction from a notorious dictator, they chose to invite a collaborator to Chávez and Maduro. This is a slap in the face to the people of Venezuela.
But in the face of a country in the throes of starvation, death and destruction from a notorious dictator, they chose to invite a collaborator to Chávez and Maduro. This is a slap in the face to the people of Venezuela.
Venezuela’s classical music superstar Gustavo Dudamel is facing vitriolic criticism from the people who risk their lives to oppose the regime. They accuse him of keeping silent during unrest that killed three people.
Dudamel, is director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. He is visiting his home country to conduct concerts marking the 39th anniversary of its renowned “El Sistema” music program, which gives classical music training to children from poor neighborhoods.
On Saturday, Dudamel conducted a free “concert for peace” including Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, at the ornate Foreign Ministry building in downtown Caracas.
His opponents and fellow classical music performers appear in no mood to embrace Dudamel, who they’ve long accused of being too cozy with Venezuela's brutal leaders.
Still fresh in many people’s minds is Dudamel’s appearance alongside Maduro during an earlier wave of deadly unrest in 2014 while reviewing architectural plans for a Frank Gehry-designed concert hall to be built in the conductor’s name.
Many are outraged that the famous conductor did not use his public position to condemn Maduro, interpreting that as support for the leftist government.
“I can’t stay silent ... You were playing in a concert while people were massacred,”wrote self-exiled world renowned Venezuelan classical pianist Gabriela Montero in an open letter to the conductor.
“We’ve passed the point of no return. Music, ambition, and fame count for nothing alongside human suffering,”
in an essay published this week she called Dudamel the
“king of silent complicity and equivocation.”
She has called the conductor a collaborator and his program
“a corrupted instrument of power.”Harvard economist and former government minister, Ricardo Hausmann, was moved to describe Dudamel as
“a giant of a musician but a moral midget.”His aunt wrote:
“I will never forget the photos of Dudamel embracing Chávez and Maduro, I will never forget that they have boasted about El Sistema all over the world and my nephew even had to pay for his [viola] strings.”His uncle commented:
“You are as responsible for the death of Armando as the same policeman who shot him. Don’t you dare mention his name, you’re a fake and a scoundrel.”Opposition supporters used social media to circulate a computer-generated image of Dudamel with his baton raised and blood pouring from his hands, against a backdrop of student protesters being arrested by the police.
For many of his compatriots, Dudamel is just one in a mass of prominent Venezuelans who have jumped ship or will do so after receiving copious benefits from the Bolivarian Revolution.
On behalf of the people of Venezuela I ask that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences withdraw its invitation to Gustavo Dudamel.
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