Astroworld

By: Shannon Brault

After 10 people died as a result of the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, Texas, mosh pit etiquette and artist responsibility should be considered in who is responsible for the tragedy 

By: Shannon Brault

Twitter blurb: After 10 people died as a result of the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, Texas, mosh pit etiquette and artist responsibility should be considered in who is responsible for the tragedy

Travis Scott hosted the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, Texas on November 5, which resulted in 10 people dying and 25 being hospitalized after the 50,000 person crowd surged the stage, crushing concertgoers and making it impossible for them to get enough oxygen. The youngest person to die was 9-year-old Ezra Blount on November 14 after being in a medically induced coma from being trampled at the festival.

Such a devastating event raises concern over who is responsible for the deaths. The crowd, first responders, security, and Travis Scott himself, who has been charged with disorderly onstage conduct in the past, are coming under fire for a variety of reasons. 

A deleted Reddit post that has been reposted describes a security guard’s experience at a Travis Scott concert. According to the post, Scott shouted profanities at the guards and encouraged the crowd to jump the barricades and rush the stage because “security can’t stop all of you.” The Reddit user said they were almost killed that night due to Scott's incitement of violence. 

Scott has twice pleaded guilty to similar charges. The first time was in 2015, when he was charged with reckless conduct after telling his fans to rush the stage at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The other charge was after a show in Arkansas in 2017. He was also sued that same year after a fan said he was pushed from an upper-deck balcony and became partially paralyzed at a concert in New York. 

@remi.rich on TikTok said he was an EMT at Astroworld this year and explained his story in a three-part series on the app. He describes the sheer depth of the crowd and the difficulty of maneuvering through it as concert-goers were getting crushed and dropping to the ground. Perhaps the most chilling part of the series was when he explained how he found an unresponsive girl on the ground. No one was trying to help her and when he asked the people around her what happened, they responded saying she had been down for 10 minutes which would have been enough time to save her. 

The TikTok series blames the ten lives that were taken on crowd irresponsibility and people who only cared about getting close to the stage. From @remi.rich’s point of view, people were dying and the crowd around them wasn’t helping them because they wanted to get closer to the stage where Scott was performing. 

While the punk community has issues of its own, mosh pit etiquette is a thing that people rarely try to mess with. The crowd typically pushes people up to the stage during sets and people are close to each other, but it is nowhere near the extent of Astroworld. Punk bands like Avenged Sevenfold and All Time Low have recently stopped their sets so that security can break up fights and save fans who have fallen unconscious.This is not new for bands in the scene, and they cultivate an environment where people are there to share the love of the music and not to get hurt or hurt other people. 

Scott did not do the same and played for 40 minutes after the show was designated a “mass-casualty incident.” According to Scott’s spokesperson, the notion that he could have stopped the show was “ludicrous” because “they have a 59-page operations plan, and it clearly says the only two people that have the authority to stop the concert were the executive producer and the concert producer.”

Police officials in Houston said they couldn’t have shut down the scene because they “have to worry about rioting.” Reporting on the police department did not elaborate on their concerns, but the fear was the crowd would riot and cause further damage as it was already a rowdy crowd. It is unclear if they suspected that a riot was going to occur or if that was the reason why they didn’t get involved sooner.

Even if Scott is not fully to blame for the concert going on as people were dying of suffocation, he has incited violence at multiple shows in the past and has created a culture in which it is more important to be close to the stage than to prevent the deaths of the people around you. His past and repeated actions set up an environment in which this was able to happen. He has disregarded his security multiple times, which goes against his own well-being, considering they are hired to keep him safe from unruly crowds. 

The 50,000 person crowd that joined together in groupthink to be closer to the barricades is also to blame. When there is a 50,000 person crowd and only a few people are reportedly stepping in to help, that’s an issue. It was bigger than one person or a few people. Everyone would have needed to stop the behavior that was happening. The people in the front who were being pushed had nowhere else to go, and there have been plenty of big shows that have happened without 10 people dying. 

The Astroworld Music Festival brought to light the importance and undeniable truth that both artists and concert-goers are responsible for how smoothly a concert goes. Scott has fostered the environment, but members of the 50,000 person crowd also made it happen. While this is a tragedy, hopefully it serves as a reminder that artists and crowd responsibility are still important parts of shows as venues open up after the pandemic. People are eager to be back, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of people’s lives.