The four performances on the final night of the Rhythms Music Festival brought a variety of acts to SFSU
About 200 people attended the concert in San Francisco State University’s Annex I, also known as the Student Life Events Center. Winners from the week’s Battle of the Bands and DJ competitions, the band Elephant Garden and DJ neeko99, respectively, as well as J Noa performed before Daya came on stage.
The Depot manager, Michelle Yang, was pleased with the week of festivities on campus and said she hopes to be a part of it again next year.
“It was nice working with the Battle of the Bands winners and the DJ Comp winners again,” Yang said. “All the bands and all the DJs that I worked with were super wonderful.”
Although the attendance was lighter than some of the previous Rhythms Music Festival concerts held at SFSU (last year’s show with Destroy Lonely and Redveil had about 700 attendees), it made for a show where everyone in the audience could be as close as they wanted to be to the artists. Some attendees opted to stay in the back of the crowd to have more room to dance together, even creating a circle around breakdancers in the crowd at one point.
Opener J Noa was the third act of the night, filling the building with her underground Dominican Republic hip-hop sound. The Latin Grammy-nominated artist came out wearing round-framed glasses, a black and white striped T-shirt that showed her tattooed arms and light blue jeans with drawings. Her entire set was rapped in Spanish, with her rapid-fire runs causing the audience to cheer and dance whether they knew the words or not.
The final act of the night was singer-songwriter Daya, who said she has been making hit dance music since she was 16 years old. Daya’s entrance gained massive applause from the audience as her two dancers framed her while she sang.
