Monday 13 November 2017

Bataclan anniversary

It's two years on since the Bataclan atrocity, and while coverage of the event moves quietly from music sites to a few paragraphs on news sites alongside a picture of the president as just another routine ceremonial political event, it's worth reflecting for a second on what happened.

Ninety people died at the Bataclan, in a night that saw a total of 130 people killed. It was the worst terrorist attack ever on French soil, and anyone who ever read a music blog, went to a gig or was moved by music could have been in that audience.

That it was the Eagles of Death Metal mattered not at all.  Those behind the atrocity did not discriminated on musical genre, style or artistic merit. Nor did they discriminate on ethnicity, race, country or ideology.

There remains a debate as to whether or not it's appropriate for bands to have played the Bataclan  following what happened. Personally, I think to have closed the venue would have seemed a victory to those who perpetrated the violence.

It's not dancing on the graves of those who died. No one could attend the Bataclan unaware of what happened there. And to go the Bataclan, to celebrate live music, art and culture, to dance, to be happy and free however briefly from the worries of everyday life remains a pretty positive act of defiance against those who would rather see us dead.


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