Portola Music Festival Ushers In Global Black Artistry And The Energetic Spirit Of Movement

The fourth installment of Portola Music Festival explodes with Black musicality, carving out the off-beat path for those seeking healing through dance.

San Francisco’s Portola Music Festival on Pier 80 is an industrial haven for communal welfare through music, movement and motion. As ticketholders wander into the fest, an imaginary portal sits between them and the Pier’s gates where after one takes a step through, you immediately enter a magnetizing energetic flow of dance and rhythms. On September 20 and 21 weekend, Portola takes over the city and joyfully spreads the sounds of house and dance music, enveloping the city habitually covered in fog with a blanket of high-BPM beats and sonics. This year’s musical lineup focused on the great impact of the alternative music scene; drenching festival-goers with rave electropop, without limitations against how long goers can move their bodies from early afternoon to midnight.

The Portola Music Festival’s programming is a week-long takeover across San Francisco. Artists on the lineup like Chris Lorenzo, Salute, Zach Fox, Kettama, and many more organize afterparties to kick off the week at SF’s most iconic venues i.e. 888 Garage, Public Works, the Warfield, the Great Northern, Monarch, Regency Ballroom etc. Over 80,000 attendees travel from across the globe to attend the Portola Music Festival. The global festival has become known for housing new wave DJs and international favorites like Austrian beatmaker Salute who hails from England or Japan’s household name and techno enthusiast, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U. Set against the industrial pierside of the Midway, Portola infuses the hard-hitting sonics of dance music with the steely rustic backdrop of shipping containers within a vast shipyard. 

Credit: Portola Music Festival

Across the two-day festival, Black artists Rico Nasty, Blood Orange, Salute, Zack Fox, Ravyn Lenae, Kilimanjaro and more presented forceful shows that got the crowd jumping. From Blood Orange’s sunset set where he debuted live performances from his most recent album that released a few weeks ago, Essex Honey, Dev Hynes sang ethereally into the sunkissed horizon. Lenae’s daytime set at the Pier Stage submerged the crowd with sounds of lovesick romance as she sang hit tracks like “Days” and “Love Me Not” from her successful Bird’s Eye album. Christina Aguilera had a stunning weekend performance — multiple generations of music fans united to celebrate the soul-touching vibrations of song and movement.

The festival of Portola debuted in 2021 and ever since, has become a fixture in the dance community for those who want to stray away from the glossy, commercial success of mega festivals like the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Even though Portola is produced by the same organizers who put together Coachella, Portola is considered a celebratory destination for the musical pariahs and niche lovers of electronic music while spotlighting newcomer musicians who may attract those with an unconventional taste in music. Rico Nasty’s Sunday set at the Crane Stage was for the grunge and rap fans who were itching to release a little rage. The DMV-artist lit up the crowd with bombastic tracks, “Tia Tamera” and “On the Low” from her 2025 album, Lethal.

The arrangement of stages are all symbolic of San Francisco’s metallic wharf terrain. The Warehouse, Pier Stage, Crane Stage, Ship Tent, and Despacio space are representative of the city’s proximity to the Bay. The Despacio disco sphere is an experimental venue where dancers line up to enter and are illuminated by the lighting designs orchestrated beams that reflect against the disco ball’s mirrored casing. 

The standout heavyweight headliners of each day were Mau P, Peggy Gou, and Dom Dolla — the innovative leaders of new-age house music. From throwing down mixes of anthemic tracks like “The Box” by Roddy Ricch to “Fein” by Travis Scott, these young DJs are producing memorable moments with chart-busting hip hop hits. As much as Portola is a place for musical belonging, the festival serves as a landing place for Black musical discovery and inspiration. Echoes of global dance music suffuse throughout the shipyard, creating a charged scene of artistic release and musical sanctuary.