Green Apple Festival rocks out for awareness

On April 20 a huge event hosted by the Earth Day Network, hit eight cities, and DC was supposed to have the hottest venue out of all the cities. The other cities were New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and San Francisco. The artists that were to perform in DC were The Roots, Will.I.Am, Ne-Yo, Talib Kweli, Wale, O.A.R. (acoustic), Blake Lewis (American Idol Finalist), Mambo Sauce and Umphrey’s McGee. The speakers included many environmentalists, including Chevy Chase.

“The concert was probably the highlight of the year so far,” said senior Zach Sells, “I wish there was another one next month. The concert was really exciting because of all the artists that were there [the environment present during the concert,] and the fact that O.A.R. was there.”

The crowd favorite surprisingly was not O.A.R, but was Mambo Sauce. Mambo Sauce is a DC rap group labeled under the go-go category, but there is a strong hip-hop influence to their go-go genre. They opened up with their top song: “Welcome to D.C.”

“I got so pumped as soon as Mambo Sauce came on,” said senior Erik Cabellos, “their song “Welcome to D.C.” was probably the highlight of the whole concert. What made the song so great was the fact that everyone at the concert was singing the song word for word. Also Mambo Sauce gave our group in the audience a shout out, it was so cool.”

“The concert was great, until it started raining,” said senior Dylan Volk, “the rain came down so hard. The concert was supposed to be delayed for about 30 minutes, and everyone was escorted out by a police car, but soon after the concert was canceled due to a lighting storm, we were all so mad.”

The concert’s last act was by Umphrey’s McGee, for whom the whole crowd went wild. The main acts which consisted of the Roots, Will.I.Am, Ne-Yo, Talib Kweli, and Wale were all canceled due to the lighting storm. Almost half of the crowd left due to the lighting storm and heavy rain, but the other half stayed and endured it only to find out that the whole event would be cancelled.

The concert was supposed to be teach the young public about how to make the world a better place through acknowledgement of environmental problems such as global warming and carbon dioxide emissions. Many speakers such as Jayni Chase, founder of the Center for Environmental Education, was there and spoke to the audience on the importance of acting now to save the world from carbon dioxide emissions.

Also during the concert the speakers gave out the telephone numbers for members of congress, so that everyone there could call them on Earth day and tell them to act now and pass laws to improve the environment and the world.   

“I hope that the calls to congress will help,” said Volk, “but I don’t know if it will really even make a dent in their decisions.”

Many people around the United States have this same feeling because they feel like they cannot really make a difference, but that is all a lie; each person can help. With each individual comes groups of thousands and even millions of people. And with that group comes a voice that needs to be preached out for everyone to hear, in this case to stop global warming. This concert, titled the Green Apple Festival, certainly did the trick for hundreds of thousands of people around the US.