Officials with the east side rock club Harpos pulled the plug early during a Saturday concert after they were alerted the band lineup was deemed to have Nazi and white-supremacist leanings.
Venue owners Ruzvelt Stevanovski and Krystle Dzajkovskalt said Monday they were blindsided by the nature of the metal show and abruptly halted it as the second of seven scheduled bands performed onstage.
Stevanovski, a longtime Detroit venue operator who purchased Harpos in January 2017, said he was working the venue’s concession area Saturday evening when he began getting “urgent phone calls” from friends. They were seeing outraged online posts claiming Harpos was hosting a neo-Nazi event.
“As soon as I found out, I walked onstage and said: ‘We’re shutting down. Kill the sound,’” he told the Free Press. The crowd at the time numbered between 200 and 250 people, Stevanovski said.
The bands onsite left without incident, he said.
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Stevanovski said the show was organized and booked by a musician in one of the participating bands. The Harpos owner said the band member, whom he had not previously met, approached him late last year to inquire about locking down a date for what the musician described only as “a black metal concert.”
Police officers arrived at Harpos on Saturday after learning “there were threats made to that location,” Detroit Police spokesman Cpl. Dan Donakowski said Monday.
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Police did not shut down the show because of content, but did order Harpos closed after discovering the venue was “not in compliance with certain licenses,” Donakowski said. The DPD spokesman did not have further details.
Saturday’s scheduled bands, which included the long-running Virginia group Grand Belial’s Key, aren’t household names, and largely operate in the underground of the black metal genre.
The concert had been promoted online for at least 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. It billed the event’s location simply as the “Detroit area.”
“Venue to be announced to ticket holders only,” read the flyer, which also promised “a night of black metal and carnage.”
As Saturday approached, the cryptic show drew growing concern in local metal circles, with social-media users raising red flags and vowing to identify the event site.
Harpos Concert Theatre, on Harper Avenue near Outer Drive, is among Detroit’s longest-running music nightspots. Since the 1980s, the club has been best known for its emphasis on hard rock, metal and punk, regularly featuring both touring acts and local artists.
Black metal, a style that originated in Europe in the ’80s, has come under fire through the decades for extreme imagery and lyrics involving occultism and nihilism. Some bands have been accused of Nazi sympathies, though many supporters of the genre have shunned those groups while defending the aggressive music as a form of fantasy escapism.
Stevanovski and Dzajkovskalt wrote in a Monday social media post that Saturday’s concert did “not reflect our values, or that of our community.”
“We are truly sorry and are holding ourselves and others involved accountable,” they said.
Dzajkovskalt added: “As a Black venue owner, I fully understand that hate and racism comes in all forms and skin tones. Therefore, my race/ethnicity is no defense or excuse for my ignorance in not knowing.”
The couple emphasized those points in a conversation with the Free Press, saying they regretted not researching the band lineup ahead of the show.
“Metal is metal to me — I didn’t even know a genre like that was out there,” Dzajkovskalt said. “I never expected someone would do something like this at the venue, especially in Detroit. Would it make sense for us to take a show like that after trying to rebuild this venue for eight years? I would never have an event like that here.”
Still, as word of the aborted Saturday show spread online, Harpos faced widespread criticism and vows of boycotts.
Stevanovski said the situation had left him distraught.
“I’ve been involved with Detroit venues for 45 years. I’ve never had an incident like this in my entire career.” said Stevanovski, who founded the original Blondie’s nightspot on 7 Mile and a later, revived version of the club on Fort Street. “We don’t want this place to become another parking lot. Now this comes.”
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
