As is the case with all EXIT events, the mission of the Sea Dance Festival has always been to promote peace, unity, love, multiculturalism, and cooperation. Due to the unpleasant past that the Yugoslav peoples unfortunately share, we know very well what wars bring, and we also know that innocent people always end up suffering the most. Sea Dance Festival sympathises with all victims of the war. It strongly condemns the Russian invasion and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine and anywhere else in the world, but cancelling the performance of any artist solely based on their nationality, race, or religion is contrary to the values that Sea Dance espouses. As a reminder, Kalush Orchestra used their official Instagram profile to call on fans to support “cleansing the scene,” They expect the Sea Dance Festival to cancel the performances of Russian acts, clearly alluding to one of the biggest electronic music stars, Nina Kraviz.
Regarding Kalush Orchestra’s Instagram post, we wish to inform the Montenegrin and international public that Sea Dance strongly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine and any other war or use of deadly force anywhere else in the world. We believe that any attack on innocent people’s lives obstructs humanity’s progress and that military aggression has no place in a modern civilised society.
Not so long ago, we were also bombed by some of the most powerful countries in the world, and many of us remember well the suffering experienced by the people in our region. Due to these terrible experiences, it is needless to say that the natural reaction of every human being is the sincerest sympathy with the members of the Kalush Orchestra and with all the victims of the war in Ukraine, as well as in other parts of the world, from Rwanda to Libya and Palestine, who have unfortunately shared the same fate.
We consider it a great pleasure to host the Ukrainian Kalush Orchestra at Sea Dance, as evidenced by the fact that their performance was among the first ones to be announced for this year’s Sea Dance Festival and that Exit’s Sea Star in Umag was the first festival in the world to host the band after they won Eurovision.
On the other hand, we believe that discrimination against any person and artist based on their nationality, race, or religion is entirely unacceptable and that cancelling an act’s performance just because they come from a specific country is not the way to achieve peace, but rather the opposite, it is the way to further divisions, escalate hatred, and deepen conflicts. We have collaborated with Nina Kraviz for a long time on our festivals, and we know that her position is not on the side of war and suffering but the side of peace, as she has publicly announced herself several times.
Musicians from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro have performed side by side at our festivals for years, even though those countries lived through a bloody conflict at the end of the last century. In this way, Exit’s festivals communicate unity and peace, building a better future in the Balkans. We look at the performances of Kalush Orchestra and Nina Kraviz at the Sea Dance festival as an opportunity to send a strong message of peace to the world together. This is the only message we want to send into the world because music has the strength and power to unite and “mobilise” more people than war and deadly force.
