Bluesfest promoter Peter Noble has apologised and taken responsibility for abusing a punter who criticised the festival's lack of female acts on the newly-announced first line-up for the 2019 event.
As Herald Sun reports, after questioning why the first line-up announce featured so few female acts (4 female-led acts amongst the 30 names announced), one Melbourne woman received a number of aggressive responses from Bluesfest's Facebook account.
"You attacking events without doing any research on them and starting a media campaign based on your own isms and schisms is the sort of thing that worked well in Nazi Germany," the message read.
"Find someone to attack because you have a screw loose. Bet you are an under or underemployed white privileged nobody with too much time on your hands. Going nowhere fast into a life of depression and loneliness due to you having nothing meaningful to justify why you continue to breathe."
Noble has taken responsibility for the messages sent and says he wrote them.
"After working from 5am to 11.30pm that night I exploded on someone for calling me a sausage festival," Noble told Herald Sun.
"I shouldn’t have done it, I will contact that person and apologise. It wasn’t a member of my staff, I did it."
He continued, "I shouldn’t have said that to that person, I know that, I was just tired of being abused. I had no right to say that to that one person. I’m ashamed of what I did."
Bluefest's social media was overwhelmed with criticism about the festival's male-heavy line-up, including comments from music industry activist group LISTEN and WA artist Stella Donnelly, who posted a list of non-male artists which she suggested could be included on the bill.
Artists named on the 2019 line-up so far include Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Kasey Chambers and George Clinton.
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