Dozens of students waved their phones’ flashlights side-to-side as they sang to “Sit Still, Look Pretty” during the 14th annual Rhythms Music Festival main concert on Saturday night. The festival concluded with Dominican rapper J Noa and Grammy-winning pop singer Daya.
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.
Attendees went wild when Daya announced that her first hit “Hide Away” was celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
Alondra Leon, a second-year pre-nursing student, has been listening to Daya since she was in middle school.
“Daya was a really good performer,” said Leon, “The dances were my favorite part of it.”
Daya’s hair was blown by multiple fans as she and her dancers moved on the stage, appearing like models on a runway. She also took a moment to slow down the show to play her song “Tokyo Drifting” solo with an electric guitar. But that slow tempo ended as she wrapped up the night with crowd-pleasers like “Feel Good,” which she recorded with artists Gryffin and ILLENIUM, and “Sit Still, Look Pretty.”
Shuta Goto, a political science exchange student from Japan, was in attendance to see Daya that night.
“I knew some of her music, and she made me love it more,” Goto said. “I loved the show.”
The final song of the night was her biggest hit “Don’t Let Me Down” with the Chainsmokers. Everyone moved to be as close to the stage as possible for the fan favorite that came out nine years ago. Daya welcomed the audience to sing along with her, which most people did word for word.
“I thought all the events went really well this year and then finishing off with tonight — tonight was amazing,” Yang said.
