A lot can go wrong at a music festival. Bad sound, expensive food and liquor, long waiting queues, and horrid company can be the rather frivolous aspects of it. But if the management itself were to fail you, then there is no coming back. The recent Solis disaster is testament to the fact that if the festival were to be organized poorly, then there is no redeeming factor left to weigh in. That’s what happened to the Solis Music festival in Islamabad.
Allegedly, the tickets sold for the festival were more than the capacity of the venue. As people continued to flow in, they were stopped by goons who told them not to use the VIP section as it was full. This led to a wave of fury among the crowd as they felt cheated because they weren’t getting what they paid for. Many allegedly forced their way in resulting in total chaos.
Solis Festival is a singularly absurd story, with each detail more surreal than the one before. But it is among the few from the music festivals to end in disaster, and it’s also among the first to collapse under the weight of a scam sales of tickets and utterly disappointing management.
People paid Rs 10,000 for the VIP ticket, only to get molested and sexually harassed by men who had gatecrashed the party. Not only that, the whole VIP enclosure fell, injuring scores of people, and resulting in utter chaos and misery for those who just wanted to enjoy good music.
People were mugged and harassed at a music event in the capital of the country. This is depressing. Pakistan does not have music festivals of these kind, and now we have given naysayers more reason about why international performers shouldn’t come here.
As people were hurt physically and emotionally, they demanded refunds. Reportedly, the organizers bailed on the venue and left everyone unattended. Attendees say that this is when the mob decided its a good idea to start breaking things.
But we also have to ask on ethical grounds. Is this really just the organizers’ fault? We need to sit down and question who were all people who mugged, harassed and hurt people at the festival. These people made a conscious choice to misbehave. The organizers could not have possibly hired as many security personnel as people. It wouldn’t have made a difference as they all went rabid.
When the average person thinks of mixed events as an opportunity for the ‘wolf to get into the sheep pen’, there’s your problem right there.
Ultimately, the music industry is only at the beginning of a long, slow process of providing the entertainment back to the deprived citizens of the country but one such disaster is enough to thrash the whole process.
