\u201cAfrican Imperial Wizard is a middle-aged white man,\u201d the band wrote<\/a> in their Instagram post. \u201cWe had the extreme displeasure of playing with him last night not knowing who he was until he came backstage and, to our shock, took off his hood. The Imperial Wizard (which is a term for a \u2018Ku Klux Klan\u2019 leader) obscures his white identity to the extent that he even wears gloves to cover his hands all while projecting a pastiche of Black African \u2018tribal\u2019 imagery on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe also claims to be part of an imagined pan-African armed struggle and calls for his African brothers to join together to play on his records,\u201d Xiu Xiu continued. \u201cThese records are actually just made with Ableton samples. In the great and horrible tradition of Western music, he is taking the art and lives of Black people and crazily perverting them for his own bizarre edification and profit. This is extreme blackface and a profound level of racist appropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Video<\/p>\n Woof \u2014 a lot to unpack here.<\/p>\n Xiu Xiu\u2019s comments follow their appearance at the Hradby Samoty festival in Bratislava, Slovakia, where African Imperial Wizard also performed. While African Imperial Wizard\u2019s Instagram page has since been set to private, evidence of their bizarre facade can still be found on their Bandcamp page, Spotify page, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n In addition to boasting album art that features what seems to be an African tribe in face paint, the artist\u2019s Bandcamp page offers an example of the \u201cpastiche\u201d mentioned by Xiu Xiu in the form of an 86-second promotional video. Elsewhere on the page is a bio that contains gems like \u201cThis jam is a major shoutout to CharweNyakasikana, the svikiro who served as the ultimate link between the living and the spirits during our ancestors\u2018 fight for freedom;\u201d \u201cDespite the oppressor\u2019s pressure, we\u2019ve firmly refused to convert to Christianity, abandon our faith, or give up our mystical mission;\u201d and \u201cWe, African Imperial Wizard, want to give a huge shoutout to our comrades who journeyed across Africa to join our recording sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time of writing, their \u2014 excuse me \u2014 his<\/em> Spotify page is also littered with images of armed African tribe members. One main picture originates from photographer Brent Stirton<\/a> (and is also available on Getty Images), while another can be traced back to iStock<\/a>, another stock image library.<\/p>\n Despite claiming to come from Angola, those known to be involved with African Imperial Wizard all hail from Europe. The project is signed to Tesco Records, a German record label, and one of the few names associated with the act is Andrew Claristidge, a French electronic music producer. It\u2019s currently unclear if Claristidge is the \u201cmiddle-aged white guy\u201d or merely a close collaborator.<\/p>\n \u201cI am just pretty fed up with how much I had to even think about this over the last couple days,\u201d Angela Seo of Xiu Xiu tells Consequence <\/em>in an exclusive statement.<\/em> \u201cI felt hesitant to even bring it up because I knew I would have to deal with the people making excuses, defending him, and then it would somehow be my problem, that we would get hate messages and comments and trolled for bringing [it] up. I would be the sensitive snowflake that was destroying someone\u2019s art and career by overreacting.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to the post on Xiu Xiu\u2019s main Instagram page, Seo had posted similar sentiments on her personal Instagram story. See screenshots of her posts below.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is an additional layer when you\u2019re probably the only person of color in the festival,\u201d Seo adds. \u201cIt goes beyond \u2018Damn, this is not ok. Maybe he should just stop doing that,\u2019 to bigger online trolling and viciousness that is damaging to everyone. Our responses, our way of engaging online, all this is just so disorienting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI also want to say that I don\u2019t believe in cancel culture. We all make mistakes. And I believe that we should be allowed to make mistakes, learn, grow. We can \u2018cancel\u2019 and discard certain actions and thoughts and practices that are not right, not people. But when someone is doing something that\u2019s not right, and hiding behind anonymity, I should be able to say that\u2019s not cool without being slammed with unhinged comments.\u201d<\/p>\n Seo and Xiu Xiu aren\u2019t the first to notice and take umbrage with African Imperial Wizard\u2019s image. One reddit user posted<\/a> a similar outing on the r\/industrialmusic subreddit earlier this year, and with the act existing in some form since at least 2019, these two accounts likely aren\u2019t the first to notice something strange was afoot.<\/p>\n The middle-aged white man did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n \/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js<\/a> In today\u2019s edition of \u201cnot The Onion,\u201d long-running experimental outfit Xiu Xiu has taken to Instagram to call out African Imperial Wizard, a provocatively-named one-man tribal\/industrial project, as actually being a \u201cmiddle aged white man\u201d underneath his \u2014 ahem \u2014 patterned Klan hood. \u201cAfrican Imperial Wizard is a middle-aged white man,\u201d the band wrote in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/African-Imperial-Wizard-Is-Actually-White-Guy-Says-Xiu-Xiu.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10240,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238\/revisions\/10240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/blockquote>\n
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