Macklemore complains major US music venues won’t host ‘Free Palestine’ tour following European gigs

In a lengthy Instagram statement posted on Friday, he said his team had initially been offered available dates at these venues through to the end of the year.

“But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table,” he wrote. “The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same. The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues.”

He described the experience as unprecedented in more than two decades of performing live.

Madison Square Garden hit back with a blunt dismissal, however, with a spokesperson for the venue telling Billboard: “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he’s not an arena-level act.”

The complaint from Macklemore comes after his benefit tour visited Dublin’s 3Arena, the Accor Arena in Paris and London’s OVO Arena Wembley in October.

The controversy traces back to early September, when Macklemore made pro-Palestinian remarks during his opening set on Ed Sheeran’s US tour at MetLife Stadium. He was subsequently removed as a support act.

Mr Sheeran sought to distance himself from the fallout, stating he was “not complicit” and insisting the decision had been made by the promoter.

It later emerged that Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft had rallied several tour venues to deliver an ultimatum to Mr Sheeran over Macklemore’s continued involvement.

“I have my personal views on this devastating conflict,” Mr Sheeran said. “Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”

In a show of solidarity with Macklemore, all four remaining opening acts as well as Mr Sheeran’s live band walked off the tour. Macklemore subsequently announced the ‘Free Palestine’ tour, with proceeds directed to aid organisations supporting Palestinians.

Macklemore suggested that the arena rejections as were part of a campaign to silence him, arguing that activists and artists who have stood with Palestine have faced similar treatment for decades.

“I’d rather lose every opportunity in this industry than spend another day protecting people who value their business relationships with Israel more than they value Palestinian human life,” he wrote.

He accused a small number of billionaires of determining which causes are deemed acceptable and which voices are permitted a platform. “Today it’s Palestine. What will it be tomorrow?” he asked.

The rapper also pointed to shifting political currents in the United States, highlighting Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate victory in Michigan on a platform that included halting US arms sales to Israel.

Macklemore declared that the venue rejections would not deter him from organising further Palestine benefit concerts. “If they think the threat of never playing another arena in America will make me retreat into silence, they got me f***ed up,” he wrote.

He signalled that future events would likely move away from traditional indoor venues altogether. “We’ll probably just take that s**t outside where it belonged in the first place,” he said.

His statement concluded with a direct challenge to the arena owners who had shut him out. “They may own the arenas. But they do not own the people who fill them. And they never will,” he wrote.

More than 40 artists and speakers had lent their names to the European leg of the tour, which raised funds for Palestinian aid groups.