Anna Von Hausswolff Church Shows Cancelled After Protesters Accuse Her Of Making Satanic Music
Gianluca Grasselli
The Swedish musician Anna Von Hausswolff makes doomy, atmospheric movement that nods towards doom metal, and she’s collaborated with metal artists like Wolves In The Throne Room and Sunn O))). Von Hausswolff’s primary instrument is the pipe organ, which isn’t the kind of thing that you can pack up in a tour van. Last year, Von Hausswolff released All Thoughts Fly, and album of pipe-organ instrumentals. Right now, Von Hausswolff is touring Europe behind that album, and many of her shows are at churches, since churches are the places where you’re most likely to find pipe organs. But a group of French conservative Catholic extremists has decided that Von Hausswolff’s music is Satanic, and they’ve forced the cancellations of two of those church shows.
As The Guardian reports, Von Hausswolff was set to play at Notre-Dame de Bon-Port in Nantes when a group of protesters blocked the door. The show had been organized in accordance with the Nantes diocese, but these protesters weren’t trying to hear it. On Instagram, Von Hausswolff wrote, “Here I am waiting inside the church while listening to about 50-100 integralists chanting and screaming outside the church’s doors, blocking the way for almost 400 people. It was a scary, tense and sad situation and there was nothing for us to do but to cancel, we had too little security.”
The show had been promoted by a cultural center called le lieu unique, and that group’s director Eli Commins defended Von Hausswolf against “unfounded accusations of desecration” in a French-language statement. Calling the protesters’ action “an attack on the freedom of creativity and expression,” Commins wrote, “There is no religious inspiration, no violence! She just plays the organ, and organs are found in churches. It’s post-metal-influenced music.”
Tonight, Von Hausswolff was scheduled to perform at Saint-Eustache in Paris, but that show has also been cancelled. Yves Trocheris, the curate of Saint-Eustache, tells The Guardian that the show was cancelled “to ensure that public order was maintained at the gates of the church.” On her Instagram story, Von Hausswolff writes that she and her team are “trying to find a new space for the concert.”
