Regent Park’s Mustafa The Poet and the Astroworld Concert Tragedy

By Dawar Naeem
Dawar Naeem is a community journalist from Focus Media Arts Centre

The 4GetAboutIt, Regent Park Youth Collective are really excited about, Regent Park's own, Mustafa the Poet's upcoming concert.  The concert will be held on 1st December 2021, at Massey Hall in Toronto.

Born to Sudanese parents, Mustafa began mesmerizing audiences with awe-inspiring poetry as a mindful pre-teen. He created raw and hopeful poetry/songs inspired by his upbringing in North America's first public housing building.

Despite his age, Mustafa was able to touch on the grave reality of his hometown, located in one of Toronto's Regent Park. In 7th grade, he performed an original piece, "A Single Rose", at Nelson Mandela Park Public school. The piece got a lot of attention and appreciation, earning him high praises at Toronto's Hot Docs Festival in 2009.

In 2016, he connected with Toronto producer Frank Dukes with whom he helped co-write and background vocals on the song "Attention" by The Weeknd on the latter's album Starboy. Mustafa would continue to work with Dukes. He co-wrote two tracks on Camila Cabello's debut album Camila, which Dukes executive produced, "All These Years" and the single "She Loves Control".

Mustafa was placed on Now's list of Toronto musicians to watch for in 2017. Mustafa is an inspiration for the Regent Park Youth. The Regent Park Youth Collective is looking forward to his concert.

Speaking of concerts, the youth collective then discussed the tragedy that occurred in Houston, Texas. Nine people died and hundreds were injured at Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival at NRG Park on Friday, November 5.  
The incident occurred after concertgoers stormed towards the stage around 9:30 p.m. during the rapper’s set. The dead ranged in age from 14 to 27. Twenty-five people were hospitalized.  The youngest patient is just 9 years old. Eight were confirmed dead on November 5. A ninth victim died on November 10, according to her family’s attorney, after previously being declared brain-dead. Some people appear to have been trampled, authorities said. About 50,000 people were attending the show.

The Regent Park Youth collective was really shook up by this incident and think that the Travis should have stopped his show as soon as his team noticed some chaos in the crowd. Various videos on social media are surfacing about the event. The Authorities are investigating the tragedy. Some videos appeared to show a person climbing onto a platform where a camera operator was filming (the event was live-streamed on Apple Music) and asking for the show to stop, yelling that people were dying. Some other people can be heard downplaying this attendee’s pleas, saying that he should “calm down.”

Having fun at a music festival is okay, but having fun without thinking about others safety is not okay.