American DJ and producer The Black Madonna has changed her stage name to The Blessed Madonna, after saying the moniker had become “a point of controversy, confusion, pain and frustration”.
The artist, real name Marea Stamper, had been met with claims of cultural appropriation, which had intensified in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Her initial stage name referred to statues and paintings in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions depicting the Virgin Mary as dark-skinned. Stamper said it was “a reflection of my family’s lifelong and profound Catholic devotion to a specific kind of European icon of the Virgin Mary which is dark in hue”.
She added that she now heard her critics “loud and clear” and that everyone had a “responsibility to try and affect positive change” in any way they can during these “extraordinary times”.
She concluded: “I want you to be able to feel confident in the person I am and what I stand for. Thank you for listening. Stay blessed.”
Her decision comes after a petition on Change.org garnered more than 1,200 signatures.
The petition, started by a user called Monty Luke, describes cultural appropriation as “the process by which aspects of one culture are copied and used (appropriated) by members of another culture”.
It says that “it should be abundantly clear that in 2020, a white woman calling herself ‘black’ is highly problematic”.
Following Black Lives Matter protests in recent months, a number of artists and sporting groups have changed their names.
American country trio The Dixie Chicks dropped the word Dixie from their title, while Lady Antebellum changed to Lady A over the term’s connotations with the pre-Civil War period in the United States when slavery was practised.
Additional reporting by PA
