French authorities have pulled the plug on a popular rap star's show during war commemorations in the town of Verdun after a clamour of criticism, notably from far-rightists who said the singer's presence was inappropriate, reports Reuters.
The rapper, Black M, was to have performed after a late-May memorial ceremony where Germany leader Angela Merkel and French counterpart Francois Hollande are set to mark the centenary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War One.
Verdun Mayor Samuel Hazard told local newspaper L'Est Républicain he was sorry to have cancelled the concert on grounds of concerns for public order. "Kids love him ... it hurt to see our country riven by so many divisions," he said.
Florian Philippot, second in command to far-right Front National party leader Marine Le Pen, said the decision to abandon the show was welcome, and that he failed to understand how it could ever have been programmed in the first place.
Day's earlier, Marine Le Pen's niece Marion Marechal Le Pen, also a Front National politician, condemned the Black M concert plan, saying the singer had in the past sung songs that spoke of France as a country of infidels.
"It's inadmissible to involve an 'artist' who has insulted France so violently in any official commemoration whatsoever of our history and homage to out fighters," she said earlier this week.
Read more of this report from Reuters.
The rhetoric in question was reminiscent of terminology used by the Islamic State, she said, referring to the Islamic militant group that controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria and claimed responsibility for the attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers that killed 130 people in Paris last November.