Shame on Riverfest

“Do you want to get high? Who wants to get high with Wiz Khalifa?”—from Saturday night main stage at Riverfest.

When I was growing up, Riverfest was a fun event that our family drove two hours from South Arkansas to enjoy. Then, in young adulthood, I enjoyed lots of the musical artists that were brought in. No more.

I am outraged at the artists this “community festival” is now bringing in. Last year, it was Juicy J, and this year it is Wiz Khalifa as headliner. I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of teens reveling to music with extremely explicit lyrics, lyrics encouraging drug use, and lyrics extremely demeaning to women, it was a free-for-all of drunkenness and drugs all around me.

Our young people and our community deserve better! Riverfest Inc. is a nonprofit whose mission is “to produce a quality, recreational, cultural, educational, family oriented festival for the benefit of and in partnership with the community.” That didn’t happen from Wiz Khalifa, the Saturday night headliner, nor from Juicy J last year. The Riverfest executive director was quoted in this paper as saying that these are the types of artists that are being booked by other festivals to be sustainable. Really? How about other up-to-date artists that can be played on the radio, and thus have met some criteria of decency?

So many others have just thrown up their hands and accepted what Riverfest has become. However, I believe that we should stand up for community decency at our state’s most advertised and largest festival. This represents us. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Yes, even in Riverfest. MARY CAROL PEDERSON

Little Rock