Pollstar: The massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival has left a massive hole in our collective industry’s heart. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, surpassing an ugly statistic set just over a year ago at yet another public gathering at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
As traumatic as these tragedies are and no matter how deeply we all bear these scars, the industry will do what it always has done in these horrible situations: adjust accordingly and do everything to improve and ensure the safety of the audiences, artists and staffs.
5 comments:
When I think of going to a music festival, I don't think I'm going to get shot. I expect to see alcohol, I expect to see drugs, but before this week I would not be worried about getting shot because if the security surrounding them. This article does a great job at highlighting the effects of this shooting on the industry, on the concert venue, and on the people that make the shows happen. This kind of incident, according to the article, has led to refunds on tickets to ACL and South by Southwest and all the other huge music festivals and it is going to impact the audience that shows u, as well as the people that are willing to still work the shows. Years from now, this tragedy will still be impacting the music festival industry.
This really has just been a very hard reminder of the state of our world and the state of gun violence in our country. That "Festivals will, in the long run, continue to thrive but in the short term there will certainly be changes – like offered refunds, apparently. Festival grounds will probably be more popular if they're out in a Kansas cornfield" is a sad truth. Instead of moving forward on a substantive gun control legislation, we will focus our energies instead into finding venues that snipers can't shoot at us from. I'm not saying that "adjust[ing] accordingly and do[ing] everything to improve and ensure the safety of the audiences, artists and staffs" that the industry is doing and has done in the past is a bad thing, but one would hope that we can pair those changes with a meaningful change in how guns are handled in this country regardless of the NRA's wishes.
The fact that we now have to adjust for acts of domestic terrorism is mind boggling to me. I live in Chicago and we have this huge music festival every year called Lollapalooza and it brings in a ton of big name artists as well as industry people. That is a festival that is entirely outside in a large city that could easily be subject to attack. When something like this happens it is so easy to try to apply it to yourself, which the article points out in it's first few sentences. I think this is an unfair level of empathy to the victims. Thinking "What if that were me?" rather than "how can we improve the state of living in our country is extremely dangerous because it fails to put anything into action.
Obviously this article is right. Large music festivals will adjust. But what's more important here is that our nation adjusts with stricter gun legislation. It feels like every other moth that a "disturbed" man walks in to a public space and kills upwards of 5 people. This simply can't continue to go on. Guns need more regulation. And they need it now.
Whenever I think of music festivals I think of community. I have never seen a more accepting and loving community than the one that occurs at music festivals. Everyone is there to enjoy the music, dance, and have fun. Sadly, this just isn’t the case all the time though. Thankfully that has always been my experience at music festivals but as seen with the massacre at Route 91 it just isn’t reality. I’m impressed that when things do occur they change and they do it very quickly and effectively to keep everyone safe and everything going. It is sad to hear events like this too because I think of that community that I have always experienced and to imagine that someone, not even willing to appear at the place they target would recklessly kill so many non-threatening people and for no reason at all, as it always seems. As long as we strive to keep doing more to keep people safe, then I think we are still in a good place though because festivals will still continue and people will feel safe going to them because it has become just that much safer.
I have never been to a music festival, but still this article causes me to think. I makes me sad to hear that even in places like music festivals which are for enjoyment, have to consider terrorism. Even though tragedies have happened in the past, I hope that the response to this shooting will bring about real change, both in the concert industry in legislation. In particular this article, without getting overly emotional, shows the intimate effects that the event had on both concert goers and the industry as a whole. That shows a different side of the event that I have not seen in other news articles. The events seem to be different from anything else that has happened before and that is part of why this event disturbs me so much. In a world where many people looking for escapism, at places like music festivals, they still have to worry about terrorism.
Post a Comment