Following the cancellation of Travis Scott’s ‘Utopia’ concert at the Pyramids of Giza, Egyptian authorities reaffirm their reasons for banning the event.
Despite the release of Travis Scott’s latest album, Utopia, setting new records on Spotify and Apple Music, Egyptian authorities have doubled down on their reasons for banning the rapper’s planned launch event and performance at the Pyramids of Giza.
The Egyptian Musicians Syndicate shut down the event just days before setup was scheduled to begin, leaving Travis Scott and his team already in Egypt with no venue for a concert. The rapper told his fans on social media that despite the cancelation, they would find another location to hold the event, but indicated it would be at a later date.
On July 28, the day of the now-canceled performance, Travis Scott surprised fans with a video from an area that appeared to be near the pyramids, singing in the dark and dancing with fans as they held up their mobile phones for light.
“THREW A PARTY AT THE PYRAMIDS,” reads the tweet from a Travis Scott fan account with an accompanying video.
But the video left some critics wondering why the rapper was still in Egypt after authorities canceled his show. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate released a statement reaffirming its decision for the cancelation.
“The decision of the union to cancel Travis Scott’s concert is a right to the syndicate because it is responsible for this matter,” said the syndicate’s official spokesperson, Mohamed Abdullah, in a statement to the press. “The union is strong, and we feared for our fans that any error might occur at the concert. The union must stand by the Egyptian people and the audience of the ceremony, and the union must express its opinion with all courage.”
Among the reasons the union cited for canceling the event included supposed “satanic rituals,” “freemasonry,” and concerns of harm befalling concertgoers, with the latter likely stemming from the 2021 Astroworld tragedy in which ten people were killed and hundreds more injured.
