Urban Marinade

I’m not really sure what went down at EDC Dallas. I didn’t attend, so I can’t even begin to give you a fair account of the event, the crowds, the heat, the drug use and the unfortunate death of Andrew Graf, a 19-year old Texas A&M sophomore. But what I can do is point out the clear bias our news media continue to have with dance music related events.

Just like my previous report on the WaPo’s poor coverage of Armin van Buuren’s performance here in DC, there are many equally poor accounts of EDC Dallas. Most notably is the (what I would call) unfair attention this event seems to be getting. Look, I feel horrible that a young man died in Dallas this past weekend. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. And I hope this is a wake-up call to anyone attending a music festival around the world. But I would like to point out that two people have now died while attending this year’s Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee. And more than 47 were arrested at the music and arts camping festival. But you didn’t see a story on the homepage of CNN. You didn’t see a bunch of long-winded stories calling this a “rave” and emphasizing heavy drug use. And you certainly don’t have a lot of unanswered questions floating around by the media and city officials asking if “event organizers did enough to prevent the tragedy?”

The point is, Bonnaroo, which is primarily a rock and roll festival, is looked at differently than EDC or any other dance music festival. Ultra Fest brings in more people than both Bonnaroo and Coachella combined without any major incident. Electric Zoo, EDC Orlando, Identity, etc. all go on without any trouble. But the dance music festival is front page news on CNN when someone dies (maybe from heat? maybe from something else? we don’t know yet.) and yet the tragedy at Bonnaroo is left to be covered by the local paper.

A well known music writer in DC once pointed out, many people suffer medical emergencies and sometimes death at any number of summer outdoor events year-after-year. But if dance music is involved, you can bet it will get front page press. So much for being fair and balanced!

Image by Drew Ressler - Rukes.com