Tidal Rave: Calm down & project the positives more

ECHO House has been organising one of the biggest, if not the biggest beach gatherings in Ghana for the last 10 years with Tidal Rave, but the recently held edition on Saturday, November 4, at the La Palme royal Beach Hotel, Accra, arguably garnered the loudest publicity but  it was mostly negative press.

The organisers may not mind, especially if they are firm believers of American showman and Circus owner, Phineas T. Barnum – famous for the quotation, ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’.  Regardless of their conviction, every event planner would also love to hear and read the positives of their project more than anything else and it is critical that we highlight the positives of the 10th edition of the festival.

Shouts To Echo House

It’s been 10 years of hosting one of the biggest beach festivals in Ghana and across Africa but Echo House as a Creative Agency has birthed quite a number of innovative projects that have contributed immensely to the creative economy for quite a while.

Starting as a periodic publication in the university as Echo Magazine in 2008, these enterprising chaps parlayed that dream into Echo Events in 2010 and engineered a myriad of culture-altering events such as, Fresh’a’Fair, Epilogo, Around the World Festival and Tidal Rave Festival.

Not to get caught lagging behind the fast-pace worldwide digital surge, they created the portal, Kuulpeeps and in the last decade and more, Echo House has built such an impressive clientele list that includes KFC, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Unilever, Guinness, Nestle, Orijin, as well as Vodafone, Mastercard Foundation and more.

There’s more!

The group is also responsible for other initiatives like Story Board Studios, an agency of photographers and videographers set up to cover small and large-scale events as well as Influencer Africa, an influencer management arm, with the biggest collection of influencers for variety of brands across Africa.

Big Leaps With Tidal Rave

 There’s no denying the fact that, the 10-year-old festival commanded the numbers but it was bedeviled with related issues; concerns about the venue, security, audience comfort and timing.

At the usual Kokrobite Beach, ‘ravers’ as revelers were popularly called, had concerns with that spot, the bad roads that lead to the venue and the discomfort they need to get to the venue and the weariness they had to endure getting back to their respective homes considering the late closing time of the event.

Security was a nightmare with incessant complaints of theft, fighting and reports of sporadic shooting and many other issues.

This year’s edition was befitting of a 10-year anniversary and Echo House ought to be celebrated. That stage set-up was everything: arguably the best seen when it comes to musical events, something that had international standards written all over it. In fact, if one was not told that, it was a concert held in Ghana by a Ghanaian-owned events firm with producers being Ghanaians – one would have easily thought it was Wireless Festival in the US.

There was such an improvement with regard to security with less or no complaints about any form of mugging, no major grousing about ticketing arrangement, no widespread condemnation of the venue change, no grumbling to every other service that was provided throughout the festival and most importantly, there were no inhibitions to the fun revelers anticipated to have. (Read also: Christian Council should ban Diana Asamoah and Cecilia Marfo, they are just confusing people, A Plus claims)

Amalgamation of Stars

There are not many music events that assemble almost every role player in the music sphere in Ghana. Tidal Rave does provide a platform for DJs, dancers, and of course, the artistes.

The event puts together the best crop of musicians every edition and the ability of Echo House to have an assemblage of the most relevant and dominant acts on stage is not spoken about enough.

The platform has also over the years served as grounds for budding acts to strut their stuff and showcase their talents.

Stage & Backstage Rift Overblown

Most often than not, the negative narrative of any event is what drives its review and Tidal Rave was no different and that’s understandable – but the fact is; the so-called fracas that ensued at the event was exaggerated.

Unverified and unsolicited social media commentaries plus unwarranted reports from established portals almost took us back to 2020, to re-ignite another Sarkodie-Stonebwoy rift.

It took over a year to mend that relationship between the two stars and in reality, even after making up; their association has not been as affectionate as it used to be and it would have been disastrous to have the industry plunged into yet another unnecessary rift.

After all the clarifications from everybody that mattered in the misunderstanding, it is clear that there was some confusion over timing of artiste participation etc. but that was not anything critical to drive the narrative in the review of the event.

There’s been lots of misunderstandings that have ensued at the backstage and on-stage for major events across the world and what transpired at Tidal Rave Festival was the least of the major incidents that have happened on both the local and international stage.

Protect the Narrative

Echo House proved their mettle with that stellar showing last weekend but just like many other event planners, they go to bed after counting their losses or gains without paying attention to the direction of the reviews of their respective events.

With the plethora of definitive incidents and elements that were exhibited at the Festival, it was important for Echo House to have a say in the positive chronicling of the event. Tell your story!

Inasmuch as the organisers need to control the narrative, as stakeholders of the media and of the industry, it is also our core responsibility to also project the positives more – especially when such events need all the succour to offer opportunities to vendors, musicians, and every other player in the food chain. Let protectionism be the ultimate goal.