From Friday November 5th to Sunday November 7th Travis Scott held his second annual Astroworld festival. This festival quickly devolved into chaos and suffering for the fans in attendance and will now be remembered for death and tragedy rather than any musical performance. As of November 10, 2021 nine people are dead from the concert, eight died at the event itself and one person was pronounced brain dead in a nearby hospital after the event. The ages of the victims range from 14 to 27 years old, but this is still subject to change. Along with this an estimated 25 people were hospitalized, including a nine year old boy who is currently in a coma. The family of the child are suing Travis Scott himself for the incident.
One of the main contributors to the concert’s rapid deterioration was that the venue couldn’t hold all the people in attendance. The festival was a decently sized open area with a stage for performers to play on. Videos quickly surfaced of people jumping fences and running past the ticket booths to get in as fast as possible. Because of this, the staff had no way of knowing how many people were in attendance at the show. Concertgoers who were not harmed would admit that everyone was incredibly close to one another, almost smothering each other throughout the show. This is what caused certain people to go into cardiac arrest and fall unconscious, collapsing. The over population also meant if you were to pass out it would take awhile for you to be escorted out of the crowd and to safety. The event had ambulances come throughout the show to help speed up the process of retrieving people in need. However videos that have come out now show people climbed on the ambulances and began to dance on them, while others would dance around the vehicle making it impossible to move.
The other large contributor to the crowd’s insane behavior was Travis Scott’s reputation for trying to incite violence and support crowd members hurting themselves at his shows. This isn’t his first event to have people pass out, Scott was notorious for photographing injured or unconscious members of his audience where he would then post on social media. One Instagram post that has been floating around is from 2015 and shows a young man laying on the ground of his concert, with the caption “To the kid that didn’t survive the rodeo, ur a hero in my book.” Posts like this make his audience want to hurt themselves in a sickening way to validate themselves to Travis Scott. The crowd can be viewed as a mob-like mentality, one person who attended the concert told The New York Times “You become one with the crowd.” Once a small portion of the audience started to get out of control the rest of the audience soon followed, becoming one conglomeration of rage and violence. Every Travis Scott concert always has some recklessness and injuries, but due to the size of the audience compared to the size of the venue, the organizers of the event should have planned for space to be minimal and for violence to be at an all time high.
The concert had a small security staff and an even smaller medical staff. Over 300 people were treated by the medical staff at the event, with 11 people having cardiac arrest. The medical staff had little to no equipment. The security guards at the event were no match for the large audience in attendance, and when needed it was nearly impossible to gain the attention of a security guard in emergencies.
A day after the event had been shut down, Travis Scott who had been gaining a considerable amount of anger and hatred from the public, released a video on his Instagram story. The video in question shows Travis Scott rubbing his forehead and chin as he speaks about the tragedies that happened during Astroworld. In the video Scott says
“I just wanna send out prayers to the ones that were lost last night. We’re actually working right now to identify the families, so we can help assist them through this tough time.”
Travis Scott
The video has garnered widespread criticism from many people. Twitter users were quick to point out the awkward movements and his unnatural manner while speaking. It was also noted that Travis Scott decided to put a black and white filter over the video, and that there was a cut in the video showing it was not done in one take. Since being posted the apology video has been reacted to, edited, and turned into a meme online. Travis Scott posted an apology to his twitter which was also criticized for its “insincere” and “bare bones” execution.
Travis Scott has come out recently and revealed that he will be paying for all the funerals of those who died at the event, he also offered a refund to anyone who attended. On top of this Scott has partnered with Better Help, an online therapy service and will pay for any attendee’s treatment. Even after doing all this, it appears Travis Scott’s image has been forever smeared by the events of Astroworld.
Since the news broke of the death toll at Astroworld many were quick to compare it to other concert incidents with similar circumstances. Twitter immediately had a comparison to The Who’s 1973 concert disaster which had 11 deaths, Woodstock 99’ which had 3 deaths, and Pearl Jam’s 2000 Roskilde Festival which also had 9 deaths. The latter were very outspoken about the event and took immediate action to rectify the disaster. Lead singer Eddie Vedder was furious and openly blasted the poor procedures put in place and the security guards that were not taking action quick enough. Vedder would state “It is our belief…that if we had been informed of a potential problem at the moment that it was first identified by the festival security, we could have stopped the show earlier and lives could have been saved.” Pearl Jam would never work with the event organizers again, and would issue a public apology after coping with the events for a few days.
Comparing Travis Scott’s explanation or lack thereof for the disaster that was Astroworld and the poorly done apology he delivered on Instagram, to Pearl Jam which immediately gave an explanation as to what occurred. They also went on national television to discuss the event and apologize, it’s easy to view Travis Scott’s actions as childish and a pivotal component to the deaths at Astroworld.