Buku 2020 Taps Out

The Buku Music and Arts Project decided that trying to stage the two-day festival didn't feel right this year. 

In mid-March, the Buku Music + Arts Project decided to Earlier this spring when it became clear that the spread of the Coronavirus made running the festival on the March 20-21 weekend dangerous and unwise. Organizers boldly rescheduled Buku for the Labor Day weekend, which at the time seemed hot and sweaty but possible. In the three weeks since Buku made the announcement, our understanding of what comes next has slowly evolved and today organizers decided that not only was Labor Day dicey, but that the situation is so unstable that the festival has opted to cancel for 2020. 

The organizers wrote:

The world was a different place 3 weeks ago when we were forced to cancel Buku and made the quick call to reschedule it for Labor Day weekend. Maybe we were naïve, but the COVID crisis seemed manageable at that point, and we did the only thing we knew how to do ... We fought for the show and the fans, quickly rebooking the whole lineup for Labor Day, and we thank the venue, vendors, staff and artists for going down that road with us. It was achievable, but then, as the pandemic began to ravage New Orleans, and now as we watch cases surpass a million worldwide, it just doesn't feel right to plan a music festival for later this year and put everyone involved through more uncertainty.

The letter announcing the decision is posted below, and it is a model for how festivals can handle bad news. The voice is on-brand, but it also levels with fans about how they got to the decision. It tells people that they'll get refunds if they want them and focuses attention on next year--March 19 and 20, 2021. Is there an element of hype and PR positioning in it? Of course, but the letter doesn't treat the people who spent money to come to their festival as nosey or put them on a need-to-know basis. Put fans on radio silence and they can turn on you quickly. 

I suspect over the course of the next month or two, other festivals in New Orleans and around the country are going to be having similar Come to Jesus moments. It's slowly dawning on the country that COVID-19 doesn't work like a light switch, and once it's under control, everything will snap back to normal. Festivals dependent on tourists will have to deal with the reality of audiences that have been out of work or had their businesses hammered by the shut down. Many people who would usually travel to festivals may not be able to afford to this year. And at the moment, festival-sized gatherings look like they might be unwise and rekindle the spread of the Coronavirus. Sponsors and festivals' attorneys may also have thoughts about moving forward, whether because they're uncomfortable with their names attached to an event that might further the spread of Coronavirus or because they're worried about the legal exposure that a festival might experience in this climate.

The Never Say Die spirit that prompted the rescheduling of the spring festivals made sense then. The new target dates may have been optimistic, but that's forgivable considering the entire Coronavirus experience has been overwhelming, so much so that few organizers could have appreciated what the country would look like a month later, much less six or seven months later.

Hopefully, things work out so that festivals can safely run in some form, but we need to be prepared for other organizers to come to the same realization that Buku's producers did.