Confederate Imagery Banned at CMA Festival

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticAnyone who wants to foster the tandem promotion of racism and sedition will have to do it somewhere other than the CMA Festival.

The annual gathering has declared that Confederate flag imagery will be banned at the biggest country music festival in the world, which will take place in Nashville June 9-14.The CMA Festival becomes the second large country music festival to institute such a ban, following the Stagecoach Festival April 29-May 1, which also made headlines for putting the flag and associated racially charged imagery on the nixed list.As in that earlier instance, promoters of the CMA Festival did not make an announcement about the ban, but rather it was publicized by journalists looking through the fine print of a list of prohibited items on the festival website, where “Confederate flag imagery of any kind” is listed alphabetically right under “Cameras with a detachable lens longer than 6″.” In a statement given to the Tennessean (which called the move “an under-the-radar decision”), the Country Music Association confirmed the new policy, and pointed out that it had been on the website since that page went up in April.“This year’s CMA Fest is our first major fan-facing event in nearly three years,” said the CMA’s statement. “We have always had policies in place that protect the safety of our fans and ban discrimination, but we felt it was important to further refine our language to explicitly outline what will and will not be tolerated. … In line with our first CMA Fest lineup announcement in early April, our event policy was published on our website, which states any behavior that causes one of our attendees to fear for their personal safety will not be.