Dear Editor,

I covered FlashFest last Thursday as a videographer for the university, and was disappointed with the total lack of variety in the lineup. Out of the five music acts, only one artist actually played a real musical instrument! That was Marina Hill and she played 4-5 songs with an acoustic guitar and no band. After that, we had a rap act take the stage, Kyle, followed by another rap act, Rae Sremmurd, followed by yet another rap act, Jeremih, followed by an EDM DJ duo, The Chainsmokers. Were there no actual bands available at all? Does USG and its programming staff believes that rap is the only music genre that exists? Am I just old and out of touch??

In the past, FlashFest has been a great event that showcases a wide variety of music for Kent State students. Just in the past few years, we’ve seen Muse, Bruno Mars, Cobra Starship, Third Eye Blind, Kendrick Lamar, Capital Cities and many other performers across many genres play here. So what happened this year? I do enjoy some rap/EDM, but the lack of actual LIVE music made the show kind of bland. Without anyone playing real instruments, it honestly just felt like a flashy karaoke show. This became even more evident when I started editing all the video footage I shot. It was hard to differentiate the acts onstage!

In addition to the lack of musical variety, the programmers also made a mistake with the lineup order. It was clear that most of the audience showed up for Rae Sremmurd and Jeremih, because by the time The Chainsmokers took the stage more than half the crowd in the MACC had cleared out. Kind of a shame when they’re supposedly the headliners.

In the future, it would be nice to see USG reflect the diversity of our student population by bringing in some more musical variety for FlashFest. There’s way more out there than just rap music!

Dustin Lee, Class of 2007

Electronic Media Production

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