What we should learn from Astroworld 2021

No one should have to fear for their life at a festival or concert – no matter who they are there to see.

Trigger warning: this article contains distressing content

On November 5th, the first night of the Astroworld festival hosted in Houston Texas, eight people lost their lives, dozens were hospitalised, and hundreds were injured. We can never let this happen again.

The casualties were caused by a crowd surge or crowd crush, as the thousands of attendees rushed towards the stage where Travis Scott was performing. Houston police and fire department were called to the scene and declared a “mass-casualty event”, although the concert went on for another half hour after this.

Astroworld Festival was first organised in 2018 by Travis Scott and has been running annually ever since, except for 2020 when the pandemic hit. It is natural to assume that after a year of lockdown, fear, and stress, people are desperate to enjoy themselves and attend events that will bring them joy.

This should and could have been, a joyous event where fans not only of Scott but of the other dozen performing artists could have had fun in a safe and organised environment. But they were failed.

Over the past month, the Astroworld tragedy has been trending on social media, becoming a more and more complex event that we, as a society, are having a hard time getting to grips with.

I couldn’t let it go when I first heard what happened. No matter how much work I had to do and things I could do in my free time, all I could think about was how horrible the events of that night must have been, and how they happened in the first place.

I’ve been to my fair share of festivals and concerts and there are few sensations I love more than being in a crowd of people who are all there for the same reason, who all want to have a good time and enjoy the music, see their favourite artists, dance, meet people, make friends…

Throughout the events I have attended in the past I have on occasion felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed – whether there were too many people in a venue, crowds rushing to get good spots, not enough access to water, not enough windows or sources of air, being pushed into a mosh-pit against my will, the list goes on… but luckily I never felt unsafe. I always felt that if I needed to, there would be a way out or someone to call.

Hundreds of Astroworld attendees have taken to social media to share their experiences, and if you ignore the conspiracy theories that are getting wilder and wilder and focus on what’s genuine, there’s something everyone agrees on: there were too many people in that venue.

In May it was announced that all 100,000 tickets for the festival sold out within 30 minutes of being released which indicates that there were supposed to be approximately 50,000 people on each of the two nights.

There have also been reports of very low numbers of security guards and medics, and even medics with little to no experience in administering CPR and other forms of urgent treatment. The combination of overcrowding constricted movement due to barriers, and the lack of personnel appears to have created an atmosphere of panic, hysteria, and violence.

Despite Travis Scott’s millions of fans and an Instagram following of 44 million, the internet isn’t letting this go any time soon.

Scott issued a statement via Instagram stories where he said that his fans “mean the world” to him and said that he was “devastated”. However, these videos have been criticised online with people saying that it isn’t a genuine apology.

Scott, as well as Drake who was one of the other artists performing, and event organizers Apple Music, Live Nation & NRG Stadium, have been hit with a series of lawsuits, the biggest claiming $2 billion in damages. Some lawyers have expressed that there was negligence on part of the festival organisers, and as Travis Scott has been arrested on several occasions due to inciting violence, it seems like a good case could be made against him.

@the.law.says.what
Lawsuit officially filed in Travis Scott Astroworld case. Harvard law spouses explain! #fyp #wtf #travisscott #law #court #news #edutok
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People all over the internet have been condemning Scott’s actions, claiming it was impossible he was unaware of the casualties occurring, especially as he stopped the show on a couple of occasions to ask security to help people.

If he could see well enough to help, he should also have been able to see (and possibly even hear) the hundreds who were begging for the show to stop.

Moreover, in one particularly disturbing clip, Scott is seen improv-singing into a microphone with his signature auto-tune effects on top, while he watches a fan be lifted out of the crowd.

All evidence points to Scott being well aware of at least a few of the casualties, and many, including myself, argue that just one is reason enough to stop the entire show.

People have also been shining a light on previous more positive concerts, where artists, regardless of the type of music they sing, have helped their fans in situations of distress and cautioned them to behave responsibly.

@screenshothq
The Astroworld tragedy should never have happened | Follow for updates on culture, news, the weird & the wonderful #travisscott #astroworld #concert #TKMaxxTalentShow #gaming
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It is well known that at rock, punk, and heavy metal concerts there are often “mosh pits”, where people back up to form a large open space and then proceed to run into the middle, often knocking into each other and jumping. But even at these events, there are often rules and etiquette that fans abide by so that they can enjoy themselves safely.

This tradition has passed on to rap and trap concerts in more recent years, but moshing doesn’t even seem to have been a big issue at Astroworld. Most festival attendees couldn’t even have participated in one if they wanted to, as most described feeling like there wasn’t enough room to breathe or even lift or lower an arm.

So far ten people are confirmed to have died from the Astroworld tragedy, with ages ranging from just nine to 27 years of age.

It is not the first time that a tragedy of this type has happened, with one of the most notable being the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 which resulted in 96 deaths.

The pattern is clear: it is not down to the individuals in the crowd, it’s down to the organisation, responsibility, and attention of the organisers and security.

So many different people could have said something was wrong, there were so many ways a tragedy like this could have been avoided. Are we going to learn from it and hold those responsible accountable?

“Cancel-culture” has been thrown around a lot regarding this situation. Should people boycott Travis Scott’s music? Should he be cancelled if he did not have the authority that the organisers did?

You can still like his music – but he was the one on stage after all, and the moment he saw someone was injured or unwell he had the power to stop the show.

Nicholas Hatton

26 December 2021

I have to say that people will try to distance themselves from this and say that it happened in the US and it was a specific musician and that it wouldn’t happen to them, over here. However, I attended Reading Festival this year and I have never seen such woeful security arrangements in my life. Groups of hundreds of customers were simply marching through the men’s toilets and using it as a thoroughfare to get to the main stage. They physically removed the fencing and pushed it away so that more could get through. People were being caught behind this and security were doing diddly squat. I pointed out to one of them when I saw a girl looking unwell and they said that they knew about it and that she was going to be thrown out if she didn’t move away. When I was sitting in the beer tent after the bands had finished, a security guard assaulted me and two of them chased me through the festival site. I was thrown to the floor by a group of security staff and two of them continued punching and kicking me in the head as I was lying on the ground, defenceless. The festival staff did not seek medical treatment for me or try to find out what went on, I was evicted from the site at 1am when there was no way of getting home. They wouldn’t co-operate with the Police enquiry as they didn’t take any statements from any witnesses. They initially claimed that they had CCTV in the area which led to me speaking to the police in the hope that the person that did this would be brought to justice. However after sitting around the police station for 18 hours and nearly missing my last train home it turned out that no such footage existed!
I don’t think that I was the only person who experienced this awful behaviour from the festival staff, there have been articles in the media about similar incidents. I’m just shocked that people aren’t drawing parallels between this lack of respect for customer safety and the deaths and life changing injuries that have been occuring at festivals here and the US.