The Experience – The Gospel Concert That Set a Template of Excellence for African Concerts

The Experience over the years has been a lesson in growth, popularity and sophistication. To quote Travis Greene the internationally acclaimed gospel music artiste: “The Experience is the largest gospel concert in the world”. And becoming the largest gospel concert in the world and arguably the largest concert in Africa means the organizers of The Experience have been doing quite a lot right.

The Experience has set a template of excellence which consists of having all-star artists perform, Wonderful handling of logistics, crowd management, top notch security protocols. To break it all down we will start by dissecting their continuous effort to have globally recognized stars to perform at their events. By connecting and getting wonderful household name artists to perform, the Experience has encouraged a lot of individuals who might not have been interested in attending the concert to do so. In a different vein, most concert promoters in Africa try to save money by having very few wonderful artists headline their concerts directly setting themselves up for an abysmal turnout at the event.

Secondly the logistics management by the House on the Rock church is quite commendable and this is because as an individual who lives just a bus stop away from the cathedral. I have never experienced traffic issues due to The Experience which is quite a stark difference to the situations normally encountered when other concerts are being held. This is because the church works with the Lagos state and the Lagos state Traffic Agency to ensure no bottlenecks which would affect people going about their normal business. And at the venue all the speakers, lights, fans, microphones and other equipment all work perfectly. And a provision for backups is made. All of this is foreign concept to a lot of concert managers in Africa.

Thirdly, the crowd management and highly laudable security protocols that are engaged by the organizers can be termed as world class. And to achieve this the church works with the traffic police and the anti-bomb squad of the Nigerian Police Lagos Command. Admittedly it is not easy to manage a crowd of over 700,000 people but somehow over the past fifteen years the House on the Rock church has been able to achieve that. And what is mind blowing about this fact is not that they are able to achieve this but rather that conveners of concerts in Africa which are not up to a fifth of the size of the crowd at The Experience find it very difficult to do so and a lot of these concerts end up in violence.

And all this which are contained in the playbook or template being used by the Conveners of The Experience has ensured success and excellence year after year. This has made The Experience a must for a lot of people. Basically, not only charting its continuous growth towards the stars but also giving a template to follow to all concerts across the African continent.