After more than a year without many huge concerts, the history lesson felt like a warning of what might happen when they returned in earnest: that many people might act especially recklessly, and many organizers especially opportunistically.
Eight attendees died and hundreds more were injured after the crowd surged during a nighttime set by the rapper Travis Scott, the founder and face of the festival.
But talking about concert catastrophes as if they’re a grim tradition, or some inevitable side effect of the impulse to gather, only distracts from the reality that safety is often something within our control.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of people broke through the gates, likely contributing to a head count exceeding the 50,000 tickets sold and creating a greater density than expected.
Before the event, the organizers’ medical vendor had put together a 22-page planning document for how to handle emergencies.
He has pleaded guilty to reckless or disorderly conduct twice—after instructing Lollapalooza attendees to climb over barricades in 2015, and after police said he tried to incite a riot at a show in 2017—and he once infamously encouraged a concertgoer to jump from a theater balcony.
But he quickly resumed both times, and kept performing for nearly 40 minutes after city officials declared a “mass casualty event.” At one point, he even chided the crowd, “Who asked me to stop?” before launching back into the music.
Some security experts have said that suddenly ending such a packed show might have caused a riot, but Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told the Times that Scott should have taken a “tactical pause.” Scott’s girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, has said they didn’t know of any deaths until after the show, and Scott posted an Instagram video saying, “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation.” In any case, the clips of the rapper performing feet away from incapacitated fans don’t suggest that Scott proactively fostered an atmosphere of watchfulness or care for the people who had come to see him.
But the truth is that live-music audiences are temporary communities that are shaped by their circumstances and composed of people with free will.
Their numbers include an athlete and an artist and a husband-to-be, and a fear of death likely wasn’t on their mind when they went out to one of the first major music festivals held in more than a year.