A little discord in paradise

It was billed as a luxury music event on a private island in the Bahamas, with good food, great music and a hefty price tag to match. Instead the Fyre Festival at the weekend collapsed in a sea of recriminations

MIAMI // Well- heeled music lovers paid up to US$ 12,000 (Dh44,000) for a ticket and VIP packages went for $ 250,000. They were promised luxury accommodation, gourmet food and exotic cocktails at an exclusive music festival in the sunkissed Bahamas.

Instead they found refugee-style tents pitched in a muddy field, stale cheese sandwiches served with limp salad – and the sound of silence from a non-existent concert stage after the event was cancelled at the last minute.

The Fyre Festival, organised by a partnership that included the rapper Ja Rule, was billed as a “once- in- a- lifetime” luxury event along the lines of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California. People had already begun arriving on the private Exuma island for the first of two weekends that was to include performances by Blink-182 and others, when the event was cancelled on Friday. The organisers blamed “circumstances out of our control” for their inability to prepare the event’s “physical infrastructure” on the largely undeveloped island.

The Fyre Festival had promised “culinary delights and luxury” over the weekends of April 29-30 and May 13-14.

Models such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski and other celebrities were used to promote the festival as a glitzy destination event.

“Think the hottest artists, the most beautiful water in the world, yachts, jet skis, and more than $1 million of real treasure and jewels hidden on the island,” the organisers promised in December.

But visitors said they were forced to sleep in “disaster relief tents” and were fed cheese sandwiches.

“I’m heart- broken,” Ja Rule said. “I wanted this to be an amazing event. It was not a scam as everyone is reporting.”

The organisers said they were working to arrange charter flights to Miami for people who had already arrived in Exuma and said inbound flights had been cancelled.

“We ask for everyone’s patience and cooperation during this difficult time as we work as quickly and safely as we can to remedy this unforeseeable situation,” the festival said. Ja Rule said: “I don’t know how everything went so left but I’m working to make it right.”

The Bahamas tourism ministry had expected the festival to be one of the largest such events held in the island chain north of Cuba.

After finding out that the promised “cultural moment created from a blend of music, art and food” was not to be, however, some visitors turned to social media to vent their anger.

“This has been one of the most ridiculous things I have ever experienced and if you know me, that is saying a whole lot,” Twitter user DylanACOP wrote.

“It is complete and total chaos. Everyone is running around frantically looking for answers and none of the staff can help. Even they are in the dark.”

Another Twitter user, William N Finley IV, said he and other guests were locked inside Exuma airport and that he saw a man pass out because of the heat.

Guests said they were asked to sign slips of paper to ask for refunds.

Some visitors blamed the government of the Bahamas, a country of more than 700 islands and cays where tourism is the largest industry.

But the Bahamas tourism ministry, which had assisted with advertising for the Fyre Festival, said it did not organise the event and that it was “extremely disappointed”.

“We offer a heartfelt apology to all who travelled to our country for this event,” it said.

“Hundreds of visitors to Exuma were met with total disorganisation and chaos,” it said, and ministry representatives were helping visitors to return home.

Ja Rule’s partner in organising the event was the tech entrepreneur Billy McFarland. The two men launched Fyre Media together in 2015.

Ja Rule told a local newspaper that he and Mr McFarland had put $20m into the event.

The chaos started to become apparent on Thursday, when rockers Blink-182 said they were not coming. “We’re not confident we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give our fans,” the band said.

Other acts in the line-up were electronic favourites Major Lazer and rising hip-hop acts Migos and Desiigner.