The organizer of Kingston Music Festival is speaking out two days after a logistical nightmare ensued at the event on Sunday. In an interview with Brandon Gomez, the event’s promoter Dwayne Hines talks about what happened at the event and says he will not be honoring any refund requests from fans.
Hines says he has produced massive festivals in Canada but whenever it’s a dancehall or Jamaican concert with Skillibeng, Shenseea, Chronic Law and Popcaan they aren’t allowed into the bigger venues.
“Do we put an event like this in a Budweiser stage, in the Scotia bank? but it’s hard to convince these venues that our culture deserve these venues and it’s weird when i say this, but it’s true because we tried.”
Brandon then asked, “Are you saying you were forced to have it outside, because certain venues in the city denied you to use their space?”
Hines responded, “a hundred percent, so when you look at the situation, we can bring anything else and they’d love it, but our culture, when we look and we say, here is this festival can it be done here, the dates aren’t available this isn’t available.”
Later in the interview Brandon asked him directly if he would refund disgruntled fans, Hines said, “there will be no refunds at this time.”
Gomez reiterated, “Even thought people couldn’t hear two of the main acts?”
Hines then responded by casting the blame at the feet of the fans, “Thats due to the fact of the damage production caused by the crowd.”
Hines however admitted that there is a 50% off for patrons at next year’s event.
Hines gave a smirk filled apology, ” We want to apologize that we could not deliver the festival, to the standards, to create such a success that we wanted but the success is that Toronto you stood by us, you waited until the last minute until all the technical issues until everything was solved and you were still there with your cell phone lights on, to ensure that Popcaan had the largest audience that he ever performed in North America so you can delivery the festival, you stood by us and we will, stay stay by delivering better quality festival, with the compensation knowing that you guys will attend many more to come.”
The organizers of Kingston Festival in Toronto faced backlash from both attendees of the event and the artists who performed after a logistical and technical difficulties made the event into a Astro World/Fire Festival style event.
The fencing for the vip section got torn down as general admission ticket holders rushed towards the stage but even that could not have saved the event. Reports also circulated of people fainting.
Watch the full interview with response from promoters below.
