DETROIT (WWJ) — The owners of Harpos, a concert venue on Detroit’s east side, are apologizing after hosting a show over the weekend featuring several bands apparently associated with neo-Nazis.
The rock club on Harper near Chalmers halted the Saturday night show during the second of seven acts after being alerted by phone calls and social media posts expressing outrage about the event.
Owners Ruzvelt Stevanovski and Krystle Dzajkovska said in a lengthy Facebook post they did not book the concert and felt “manipulated” by the event organizer, whom they had never worked with before. The organizer was reportedly one of the musicians in one of the performing bands.
“We were not given certain information during the process of booking this event that could have prevented this from happening. After reflection on our end, we realize that although we should have asked for more and done more research, we feel that by design, they deliberately failed to provide such information,” the post said.
“We feel manipulated throughout the entire process and will continue to address where we need to improve,” Dazjkovska wrote.
She said she and Stevanovski, prior to the event, “were not made aware ahead of time that some of the bands were in any association with Nazi/Neo Nazi, White Supremacy, and/or Nationalist Socialist black metal.”
“If I were made aware of this ahead of time, this event would have never happened. This was the first time this event organizer has done an event at our venue,” she wrote.
Dzajkovska said they were only told the event would be a “Black Metal Festival,” a genre she says the venue has hosted many times in the past.
Stevanovski told The Detroit Free Press as soon as he found out Saturday night he walked onstage and said “we’re shutting down. Kill the sound.” There were between 200-250 people at the venue at the time, according to the report.
The Free Press reported the concert was promoted online for several weeks — though not on Harpos’ platforms — with a flyer “touting a seven-band lineup that included several visiting bands and at least one Michigan act.” The flyer billed the event’s location simply as the “Detroit area.”
One of the bands alleged to have neo-Nazi affiliations at Saturday's event was Grand Bilial's Key, a long-running group formed in Virginia, according to the Freep.
“As far as the event location being hidden. It was not Harpos’ that kept the location of the event from the public. This was per the request of the event organizer explaining that this is the way he does his metal shows; he sells tickets for the event and the location is only disclosed to the ticket holders the day of the event,” Dazjkovska’s post said. “I did not assume that the reason for this was due to the nature of the band(s). The event organizer also stated for us not to promote on our website, Facebook, or Instagram, and that he would handle his own promotion for the event so that the location wouldn’t be disclosed. This was not our decision. This is also the explanation as to why we were not aware of the circulating hate driven flyers with the red markings clearly indicating the nature, which was different from the original flyer. We were not tagged in those original posts.”
Detroit police responded to the venue Saturday night after learning of threats made against the venue for hosting the event. The owners said they did not call police and did not learn of the threats until they showed up.
“The outrage and anger is completely understood and shows that there is still some humanity left in this world and that there are still individuals out there that will stand up against what is wrong and hateful,” Dazjkovska said. “Hate and racism is not something that I or Harpos stand for, encourage, or promote and I would never knowingly or intentionally hold this type of event at my venue with the risk of losing the support of my community and my venue. This is not who we are, this is not what we represent.”