As she has done before, last month, Lido Pimienta, a Colombian-Canadian singer, asked audience members of color to move to the front and white members to move to the back. Unlike other times she has made that request, some white members refused to act in accordance with her request, including a white female volunteer who was reportedly there to photograph the show.
As Billboard reported, Pimienta’s concert last month at the Marquee Ballroom in Nova Scotia’s capital precipitated responses Pimineta had not received before.
Although Billboard could offer no details regarding the alleged racism, festival officials claimed the photographer and several white members of the audience reacted with “aggressive” and “overt racism” after Pimineta requested “brown girls to the front.”
According to the National Post, Allie O’Manique, who shares management with Pimienta, said the female photographer would not budge from her position near the stage, prompting anger from some crowd members. O’Manique, whose version of events was confirmed by Festival spokesman Trevor Murphy, said that Pimienta “just kept saying, ‘Move to the back’ … finally after saying it about 10 times — and the woman refused to move — [Pimienta] said, ‘You’re cutting into my set time, and you’re disrespecting these women, and I don’t have time for this.”
