Boiler Room Faces Backlash Over Palestine Support and Ownership Ties
Can underground music survive corporate ownership?
Mar 17, 2025
Boiler Room is facing backlash after its owner, Superstruct Entertainment, was acquired by KKR—a global investment firm linked to Israeli businesses. Fans and artists are calling out the platform's Palestine fundraiser as performative activism, highlighting the contradiction between Boiler Room's stated solidarity and its Zionist financial ties. With artists beginning to boycott, the controversy sparks a critical conversation: can underground music survive corporate ownership?
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Al-Ahram Weekly
a day ago
- Al-Ahram Weekly
The moral high ground
A few months into the war on Gaza, following the 7 October attacks, I found myself like everyone else, glued to the news around the clock, watching non-stop the horror coming out of Gaza. One night, as the Israeli forces started to bomb Al-Shefa Hospital – a spot I was familiar with, having developed a bond with the reporter who broadcast from there – I realised that reporter was no longer there. He was not even mentioned. That night was particularly heartbreaking for me. I felt pressure in my head, as if it might literally explode. Waves of anxiety surged through me, along with terrible thoughts, and I had to turn off the television and wander around my house at 2:00am, desperately trying to shift my focus. I remembered that night as I watched the Palestinian documentary A State of Passion – directed by Carol Mansour, a Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker with Palestinian ancestry, and Muna Khalidi, who has a very close friendship with Abu-Sittah – which follows the renowned Palestinian-British plastic and reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah when he volunteered to enter Gaza for the sixth time at a time of conflict only to realise that this time it was full-scale genocide. He had never performed this number of amputations on children ever in his life, as he said at one of the most moving moments. At this point, when the film was recently screened at Zawya in the lineup of the Between Women Filmmakers Caravan – an independent initiative organised by a group of female filmmakers and film curators – the Gaza war was already one year and eight months old. Still, I'd missed the first screening of the film, which made its world premiere at the Cairo International Film Festival, receiving three awards: the top award of the Horizons of Arab Cinema section, the Saadeddin Wahba Award for Best Arabic Film, and the second prize for Best Palestinian Film as well as a Special Mention for Abu-Sittah. After 43 days in Gaza, Abu-Sittah jumped on a plane to Amman to spend 24 hours with Mansour and Khalidi, who had called to request the meeting. As they stated in an online interview with the audience after the screening, the phone call that appears in the film is the real phone call. In Amman, the camera captures the emotions involved in the meeting, which also involves an old friend of Abu-Sittah's and his proud mother, whose favourite son he was, according to the two filmmakers. Mansour and Khalidi accompany Abu-Sittah on a quick visit to Kuwait, where he was raised and where he reminisces about his father, also a doctor, in front of said father's former clinic. Abu-Sittah was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. His father's family originated in Maain Abu-Sittah in the southeast of Gaza, which they were forced to flee when the Zionists attacked during the Nakba. They moved to Kuwait and later to the United Kingdom in the 1980s and Abu-Sittah eventually realised his father's dream by studying medicine at Glasgow University. The documentary includes some harsh photos of children undergoing surgical procedures, especially when Abu-Sittah is trying to prove that Israel used white phosphorus in their military operations, but such graphic imagery was limited, reflecting the filmmakers' decision to give only a small taste of the horror after they were faced with the predicament of whether and how much to show. Abu-Sittah recalls performing amputations on six children in a single day, and when he elaborates on how complicated the situation is there, he explains that health procedures are based on people directing you to save the life of the only living member of the family or whether a doctor can just clean up a wound that will keep someone alive for a day so as to save a few other lives that require urgent attention. Abu-Sittah made his way to Gaza to treat patients all the way through Rafah many times; his first medical visit to Gaza was during the first Intifada in 1987. He was back during the second Intifada in 2000 and then in the wars of 2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and finally 2023. Mansour alone accompanies Abu-Sittah to London where he lives with his family: his wife Dima and three sons. Khalidi couldn't go due to complications with her visa. And this is where the documentary becomes a more personal exploration of Abu-Sittah's extraordinary character. When he's not working, he is with his family, a dedicated husband and father whose presence is a delight to them. He is seen ironing his sons' school uniforms and putting together their lunch boxes in the morning. There is a sequence in the 90-minute documentary when we hear the exchange of voice messages between him and his three sons. It is touching how he says good morning to each of them in spite of the horrors he is enduring so many miles away. Dima and Abu-Sittah have a sweet relationship with the Palestinian cause at its core. Dima explains how she took the children to Gaza, showing them every corner of it with a strange presentiment that it might not survive. They went to the beach and visited all the landmarks. Her presentiment was right: they returned on 7 September, exactly a month before the horrific incidents began. When Dima and Abu Sittah were in Gaza, they took along Dima's mother, who needed medical attention in London while her father remained alone, an old man tired of being repeatedly displaced, refusing to leave his house. The mother could not return to Gaza but she has been living in Egypt: she was even present at the screening of the film. When Dima spoke of Palestinian resilience, it rang true in a way it usually doesn't. 'If he hadn't gone to Gaza, I wouldn't have known how to maintain my respect for him,' she also said of Abu-Sittah, who, for his part, said they were both so clear about his need to be there, the decision didn't even have to be discussed. * A version of this article appears in print in the 5 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
See - Sada Elbalad
2 days ago
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First Lady Extends Eid Al-Adha Greetings to Arab, Islamic Nations
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CairoScene
6 days ago
- CairoScene
Why Are Artists Boycotting Sónar Festival 2025?
Why Are Artists Boycotting Sónar Festival 2025? Over 70 artists have dropped out of Sónar 2025 over ties to KKR, an investment giant linked to arms and Israeli military tech. More than 70 artists have pulled out of Sónar Festival 2025 in protest of its ownership ties to KKR, a global investment firm linked to weapons manufacturing, surveillance technology, and Israeli military contracts. What began as a quiet call to accountability has grown into a full-blown boycott campaign, raising urgent questions about the politics behind music festival funding. KKR—short for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts—acquired Superstruct Entertainment in 2020. Superstruct owns or controls more than 80 festivals worldwide, including Sónar, Outlook, DGTL, and Parookaville. With the ongoing genocide in Gaza and heightened scrutiny over financial complicity, artists and activists are demanding transparency about who funds the events they participate in, and what those companies profit from. The boycott was spearheaded by the Palestinian-led BDS movement, which called Sónar's relationship with KKR 'involuntary complicity in genocide.' That statement struck a chord. In a matter of days, artists like Ikonika, Florentino, Manuka Honey, and ABADIR publicly canceled their scheduled appearances. Egyptian artist ABADIR wrote: 'I can't participate in good conscience… This is about anti-racism and solidarity.' Sónar initially responded by stating that it 'promotes respect for human rights.' But as pressure mounted, the festival issued a second statement on May 19th, saying: 'We have no control over KKR's investments, and we express solidarity with Gaza's civilians.' It added, 'No ownership structure will define who we are.' But many aren't buying it. Amsterdam's DGTL Festival, also owned by Superstruct, released a much firmer statement acknowledging that 'KKR's investments are unethical' and promising to reassess its affiliations. Even Boiler Room came under fire after launching a pro-Palestine fundraising campaign while remaining silent about its own past ties to KKR, a contradiction that artists and audiences were quick to point out. For many, the issue is not just about Gaza. It's about the role of music in systems of oppression. As stages grow larger and more corporate, the decisions about who profits from culture, and who is erased by it, are no longer invisible.
