DJ Snake’s Delhi concert: another disaster by Sunburn? // DD002

Anirudh Singh

In Discord Discourse, Event Posted March 25, 2019

In Early February, Sunburn announced DJ Snake’s India tour with shows in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi. The tickets were super cheap, just ₹500! Who would miss out on such a deal? 

Apparently no-one did. And because of the huge footfall, things didn’t exactly go as Sunburn planned both in it’s Bangalore and Delhi events. Over at Discord , we had a chat about DJ Snake’s Delhi show and discussed the disastrous event. Here’s a summary of the conversation-

What all went wrong?

Disclaimer: I need to make it clear, we all agree that it’s not DJ Snake’s fault

Timing

The event was originally supposed to happen in the evening with DJ Snake playing from 8:40 to 10pm – a pretty normal timing for an EDM show. But just a day prior on 23rd March, Sunburn announced a change in timings with the event taking place in the afternoon and DJ Snake playing from 3:40 to 5pm.

Now mind it, this is a Delhi summer afternoon we’re talking about. The highest temperature on that day was 33°C. The attendees were dying of heat quite literally. Many people in the crowd even fainted.

It’s almost as if Sunburn made a pun out of their name(Oh wait they did)

Venue

An event’s venue is the most crucial factor in it’s success. DJ Snake’s concert was held at GMR Arena, Aerocity. The place lacks in options for public transport and people had to walk a lot from the parking and metro station. 

Being near an international airport, the venue had incredibly poor connectivity. But that’s not even the first thing you’d notice- that’d be dust- and a lot of it! 

Water

Scorching Delhi heat, super energetic music, there’s dust in your throat already and now imagine you find out that there’s no water! 
Taking lessons from the Bangalore show, DJ Snake asked Sunburn to provide free water at the Delhi show, which they did provide- but there was simply little to no water available. 

People looted refrigerators and distributed soft drinks for free!

It was seen that there was a huge excess of water present at the VIP section while the General Access crowd was almost dying of thirst (in both senses of the word)

Security

The GA area was filled with creepy guys. They were doing their creepy stuff- going shirtless and all. And a lot of girls got uncomfortable because of them. There was clearly a lack of proper security and management.

DJ Snake’s team should’ve chosen a better event partner. The Marshmello concert in February was managed by VH1, and they had guards/bouncers roaming all across the venue.

CISF was deployed here as well, the picture of two security personnel standing on the speakers are from CISF. They were there to drive away the crowd from climbing the speakers. CISF is the same Force that guards Delhi metro, but here the situation was messed up. 

Crazy people even managed to climb up the speakers! xD

Pick-pocketing

Going through the comments section of DJ Snake’s post, you can see a large number of people complaining about lost/pickpocketed mobile phones. Some even say they recognize who stole it.

Can we blame the low cost of tickets for that? How did the pickpockets enter the arena? (Perhaps they were just good at math and realised the profit margin of the investment 😛)

Visuals

Finally coming up to my favourite topic. Being a summer afternoon, an event that was originally intended to take place at night couldn’t deliver even decent visual quality. You could barely see the screens. Plus there were no fireworks. The whole experience in itself was subpar.

DJ Snake had to stop multiple times into the set to facilitate water distribution. That statement is as funny as it is sad.

Why did it Go So Wrong?

Honestly, the event was a total lack of management and did nothing but create a ruckus. It is speculated that the management changed the event timings to cut off some crowd. Despite that, it added to the failure of the event.

Conclusion

If given the choice, I’d prefer to sit in my AC room rather than attend the concert. Perhaps the best part about DJ Snake’s India tour was him sitting at the back of a bike to reach his venue on time. He is now, rightfully a better Indian than most of us will ever be 😛

(More: In our last article, we talked about Getter’s debut album “Visceral” )

Missed the conversation? Don’t worry! We have such chats on our discord almost daily. Head over to the link to be a part of our Discord Discourse : https://discord.gg/F6TVZAc