Canadian singer-songwriter Bells Larsen is cancelling his forthcoming U.S. tour after the Trump administration made it impossible for him to travel in the country as a trans man.
In a lengthy post to his Instagram on Friday (April 11), Larsen revealed that, according to an email from the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), he would not be able to apply for a travel visa to the United States since his Canadian passport designates his gender rather than his biological sex.
“To put it super plainly, because I’m trans (and have an M on my passport), I can’t tour in the States,” Larsen wrote. “I hesitate to include a ‘right now’ or an ‘anymore’ at the end of my previous sentence, because — in this sociopolitical climate — I truly don’t know which phrasing holds more truth.”
Billboard has reached out to the AFM for comment.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services (USCIS) announced at the beginning of April that they had updated their policy at the outset of April to only recognize biological sex on immigration forms, in accordance with the Trump administration’s executive order requiring travel documents (including passports and visas) to designate a person’s sex as assigned at birth.
In his post, Larsen admits that he was already feeling trepidatious about touring the U.S. amidst an onslaught of anti-trans initiatives being pursued by the current administration, especially when it came to the administration’s treatment of trans people crossing the border. “If random people are getting randomly questioned/stopped/detained at borders, how can I — as someone wanting to make money abroad by exhibiting my lived experience as a trans person — expect to pass go and get out of jail free?” he asked. “My plan was to tour with harm reduction in mind.”
Larsen said that after speaking with two separate immigration lawyers and the AFM, he decided that there was “no way to move forward” with his scheduled tour, despite his eagerness to see his U.S. fans. “This new policy has crushed my dreams,” he wrote. “I’m cradling a very broken heart and the realization that I don’t know if or when I will be able to tour in the States again.”
The singer-songwriter was set to bring his forthcoming new album Blurring Time stateside this June, with dates in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles throughout the month. The new LP deals extensively with Larsen’s experience transitioning while using vocal recordings from both before and after his transition (his “high” and “low” voices, as he calls them in a statement) to create harmonies between his former and current self. The latest single from that album, “Might,” was released on Wednesday (April 9).
“I was hoping that the album would help me break into the US music market and connect with cool, likeminded American musicians,” he wrote. “More than anything, thought, I just really wanted to perform my album for queer and trans people in the US who saw their stories reflected in my own.”
Bells Larsen’s new album Blurring Time drops on April 25 via Royal Mountain Records. Read his full statement on his cancelled U.S. tour below:
