Tidal Rave 22: Eyewitness account of a once-in-a-lifetime festival experience that turned into a nightmare

A couple of weeks ago, my boss the Ameyaw Debrah himself started advertising for Tidal Rave 2022. Every time I went on Twitter, I would see an ad, and for the very first time, it piqued my interest and I was ready to go see what the “rave” was all about. Fast forward to Saturday, October 15, the day of the festival, after my boss confirmed our passes were ready, I was hyped and ready to go experience this once-in-a-lifetime concert; I mean a road trip, a beach vibe, and a concert all in one, three of my favorite things! The team and I set off from our office in Westlands at about 4:45 pm to take on this journey to kokrobite. I was very excited because this was going to be my first time in that area and I had heard about how great the beachside is. As big Black Sherif fans, we played his new album non-stop as we journeyed because we were looking forward to his performance later in the night. The journey from Westlands to Kokrobite was long, to say the least. After setting off at around 4:45 pm-ish, we still hadn’t gotten to the venue (Luxury Beach) as at 7 pm. The traffic was crazy, to say the least, and at some point, I was telling myself if this concert was really worth this tumultuous journey. The streets were packed. Locals who lived in the area had to get down from their troskis to walk to their homes because festival goers had taken over the streets with their cars and causing heavy traffic. At a point, one of the locals shouted at us for disrupting her journey and when we apologized, she jokingly said “mony3 sorry biaa” to wit, “you’re not really sorry.” Some festival-goers gave up on their cars and Ubers and resorted to Okada to take them to the festival grounds faster. We managed to be patient and sat in our car till we were about 10 minutes from the festival grounds. At that point, we were all tired and really needed to get our legs stretched, so we asked our driver to drop us off in the middle of the traffic and find a spot to park till we were closed. We got down from the vehicle and trekked for another 10 minutes before we finally arrived at Luxury Beach, the venue of the festival. Seeing that Luxury Beach sign brought a bit of relief to me because finally, we had arrived and this was at about 7:30 pm. On arrival at the entrance, it was messy and crowded situation. So many people were standing outside and we wondered why. A fight almost broke right there in front of us and I was almost pushed to the ground. That was the start of my woes. We finally got our tickets together and made it through the entrance. After our tickets were checked by security at the first entrance, there was going to be two more ticket checkpoints before we were allowed in. It didn’t make sense to me but it was the only way so we went through each checkpoint before finally arriving at the bridge. Yes, there was a bridge connecting the mainland to the beach. This is because the water was in the middle between the mainland and the beach and in order to get to the beach, you needed to walk across the bridge to the beach. Seeing the bridge for the very first time made me happy. I loved the ambiance, the lighting on the bridge and honestly, it was a cool vibe walking across it and I enjoyed it very much. What I didn’t know was that it would become a nightmare a few hours later. We finally made it into the festival grounds, the vibe was great; lots of food stands, beautiful ladies and gentlemen, it was like the whole of Accra had moved to the festival. In my head, yes, we were about to have a good time. The first thing we did was look for bathrooms and they were nothing to write home about. The washrooms had been soiled up and messy and was not healthy. So we stepped out, boys found a place to ease themselves and we made our way to get some drinks and food because we were famished from the long drive. It took us about one and a half hour to get our food, eat and wait for some of our other friends to join us. The first time I heard about the damage on the bridge was when one of my team members stepped out to bring another person in. He had seen that the bridge was half broken and was telling us about it when he got back. We all prayed that it wasn’t completely damaged before we went out. And now to the reason why we were at the festival, the performances. Kojo Manuel and DJ Vyrusky turned the place up for a while before the first performance of the night, Darko Vibes. I’m sure up-and-coming artists may have had the opportunity to showcase their talents before then but we missed out on those. We also missed out on Mr. Drew’s performance. Darko Vibes was great, but the party really started when R2Bees took the stage. When R2Bees took the stage, I could barely see them, the stage was too far away from me and although I had seen two different monitors on both sides of the stage, they were not used to stream the performances for people in the back to catch a glimpse of what was happening on stage. It was a mammoth crowd and those monitors needed to have helped festivalgoers to see what was happening on stage. But organizers failed in that regard. Anyway, R2Bees were the best performers of the night in my opinion and ravers jammed their hearts out. The next to follow was Sarkodie who brought fireworks, literally, as usual to the stage. Sark’s performance was nothing short of amazing and he was accompanied by dozens of fireworks while on stage. I did not understand why fireworks were lit for just his performance and not at the end of the show but that is another story for another day. Then came Joey B who rocked the stage as well. Gyakie’s performance lacked energy and her voice was totally off. She has a long way to go with live performances. And then the surprise performance, KiDi the sugar daddy came on and did his thing as well. Let me reiterate that I was on the festival grounds, yet, I cannot tell you what outfit any of these performers wore on stage. The little I could see was from people’s recordings on their phones. That’s how terrible the viewing was. The last performance of the night, and truly the only performance I was looking forward to; Black Sherif’s. Black Sherif came prepared to give a full-blown experience. His entrance was carefully crafted with dancers and all, and him starting with his “Soja” song caught the attention of ravers who were totally looking forward to his performance. However, for some reason, both light and sound went off in the middle of his performance. Did Blacko leave the stage like KiDi did last week on the UCC stage? No, he did not. He stayed on till the light and sound came back on and continued with his performance. In the middle of it, the sound went off again. At this point in my head, I’m thinking, oh shoot, Blacko will definitely leave now. Nope, he didn’t, he continued to perform without the sound and the crowd sang along. He performed 2 more songs and finally called it a night. My team and I had already started making our way out when we realized there was no salvaging Blacko’s performance. As we made our way to the beach entrance, other festivalgoers picked our cue and were ready to leave as well. Just as we were about nearing the entrance, we almost got caught up in a stampede because all of the sudden, everyone was at one place at the same time. People were suffocating, including me, who’s asthmatic. Just as we were pushing ahead, we saw those ahead of us coming back in, reason, the bridge had completely broken down and there was no way out. My heart sank into my stomach at this point. Just as we were standing by protecting our bags and bodies, we saw them carrying a lady who had fallen into the water and had fainted, looking for ways to resuscitate her. It was at this point, I knew I was going to spend the entire night on the beach. We started looking around scouting to see if there was any security personnel to tell us what to do next but couldn’t find any. We stood around waiting for about 15 minutes before one of our team members, found someone who knew his way around the beach. Apparently, we could walk to the other side of the beach and find our way out using a different route. So, we kickstarted the journey, praying to God that nobody would beat us up and seize our belongings. We had been warned about how unsafe the place was. It was either to get out of the place or stay on the festival grounds till daybreak and we opted for the former. The walk using the other side of the beach took us close to 10-15 minutes and we finally made it out safe unto the main road. It was a big sigh of relief for all of us. Just as we called our driver to come pick us up, and we were told that so many girls who used a particular route had been robbed and stripped of their clothes and belongings. People had been stabbed, and so many other security issues. Thankfully for us, we got out of there and into our car safely and drove back home using a shorter route. For a first-timer, this experience has completely barred me from ever attending any Tidal Rave concert, ever again. And it’s not just me, the reviews on social media are nothing to write home about. The most interesting part of this security issue at the festival is the fact that Echo House, organizers of Tidal Rave had put out several security disclaimer tweets ahead of the concert. But I guess it was all just PR because the security on the grounds was nothing to write home about. This is not the first Tidal Rave concert, Echo house has done this a couple of times now and should know of the terrible security situation in the areas and make provisions for thousands of security personnel because reviews from the concert have always been centered around security. To add, either organizers did not expect such a crowd this year to have envisaged that it could lead to the damage of a bridge due to pressure or they did but did not care and were just interested in making their money. However, this should be a learning curve for all of us, both event organizers and festival goers to make sure whatever festivals we are attending are safe enough for us. Concert goers’ lives matter, and they deserve better.