Gorillaz were introduced at Primavera Sound by Palestinian activist Aarab Barghouti, the son of imprisoned politician Marwan Barghouti.
Damon Albarn and co. played on the Barcelona festival’s Estrella Damm stage on Saturday night (June 6) and invited Barghouti to give a speech to open their set.
The activist’s father has served as an elected legislator in Palestine and has been tipped as a potential future leader, but he has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002 after being convicted on charges related to deadly attacks during the Second Intifada. He has consistently denied responsibility for those attacks and rejected the legitimacy of the Israeli court that tried him.
At Primavera, Aarab Barghouti said from the stage: “My father is one of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, but for millions of Palestinians he represents something that Israel cannot imprison: hope.”
Gorillaz were introduced at Primavera Sound by Aarab Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and son of imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti.
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“Hope that Palestinian children will grow up in peace,” he continued. “Freedom won in South Africa, in Ireland, and in Algeria, because people like you refused to look away, refused to give up. So keep fighting for Palestine, for Gaza, and for justice.”
Massive Attack were scheduled to play at Primavera on Thursday night (June 4) but their set was one of those cancelled due to extreme weather.
The group’s Robert Del Naja posted an image of himself with Barghouti backstage at the festival, however, and noted: “The one moment of light during the Primavera storm was sharing time with our guest Arab Barghouti, who we’d invited to speak on behalf of his father Marwan to appeal for his release.”
Albarn has been outspoken on Palestinian rights consistently in recent years and appeared at the Together For Palestine show in London last September, organised by Brian Eno. He played a medley of Palestinian traditional songs with the London Arab Orchestra and the Juzour Dance Collective, while Gorillaz later played ‘Damascus’, which went on to be included on their recent album ‘The Mountain’.
In other Gorillaz news, they recently announced their first ever shows in India, to take place in January 2027. The country’s musical and spiritual traditions were huge influences on ‘The Mountain’.
Albarn also confirmed he is scoring Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie about the founders of ChatGPT, titled Artificial. Speaking about the technology, he said: “Once it becomes easy, it’s meaningless. In a way, it’s the things you don’t see or hear that make it art. It’s a weird intuition that the listener has that picks up on the journey that the artist has been through to make that particular thing with the tone of the voice, etc. You can’t replace that.”
