{"id":188061,"date":"2025-09-19T12:11:55","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/09\/19\/how-is-the-portola-lineup-designed-the-festivals-founder-on-his-mad-scientist-approach\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T12:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:11:55","slug":"how-is-the-portola-lineup-designed-the-festivals-founder-on-his-mad-scientist-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/09\/19\/how-is-the-portola-lineup-designed-the-festivals-founder-on-his-mad-scientist-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"How Is the Portola Lineup Designed? The Festival\u2019s Founder on His \u2018Mad Scientist\u2019 Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

\n\t\u201cEvery festival booker has their own process,\u201d says Danny Bell, the founder and booker of San Francisco\u2019s Portola. \u201cMine is definitely more mad scientist-y than other people\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

\n
\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Portola<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tDance Festival Portola Avoided Using 6,053 Gallons of Diesel at Its 2024 Event. Here\u2019s How\u00a0\u00a0\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

<\/time><\/p><\/div>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Chris<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tChris Cornell Sings Rihanna Song With Daughter Toni in Sweet Throwback Video for Her Birthday: ’21 Years Went By in a Flash’\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

<\/time><\/p><\/div>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kehlani\"<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tBrandy Sprinkles ‘Some Brandy Sauce’ Onto Kehlani’s ‘Folded’: ‘The Hottest Song of the Summer’\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

<\/time><\/p><\/div>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBell\u2019s metaphorical lab is a spreadsheet, which he begins tinkering with a year before the festival itself. The sheet allows Bell to see \u201call the different looks at once,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have your money grid, your mock set times, your poster.\u201d He\u2019s made algorithms that let him organize it by an artist\u2019s subgenre, gender, race and home country. There\u2019s one designed around when the sun sets and when there\u2019s full dark. He works to select a group of artists who are unlikely to play any of the same tracks twice over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCan you do it quicker?\u201d Bell, the SVP of talent at Goldenvoice, asks rhetorically while talking to Billboard <\/em>over Zoom from his office in San Francisco. \u201cFor sure. There\u2019s probably a much simpler way, but I do it like this. I want to make sure to have all these different visualizations because this stuff is is important. It all works together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom these datasets eventually emerge the lineup and set times for Portola, which since its 2022 debut has become a dance festival circuit standout for putting artists who helped develop the dance\/electronic genre alongside many of the moment\u2019s most essential stars and emerging artists. Every year Bell also reserves a set time for a pop icon, a space that in 2025 belongs to Christina Aguilera<\/a>, who Bell promises will perform \u201cbanger after banger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Portola has put a whole host of big names in front of the 40,000-person crowd that gathers at the festival site at San Francisco\u2019s Pier 80 (past headliners have included Flume, The Chemical Brothers, Eric Prydz, Skrillex, R\u00fcf\u00fcs du Sol and Justice), this year puts an especially heavy emphasis on \u201cshowcasing the legends and pioneers of the scene and some of the most influential people the last 30 years,\u201d Bell says. \u201cThis lineup is a real ode to to where the current sounds and state of electronic music came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s not being hyperbolic. The fest this weekend (Sept. 20-21) will unpack the influence of the \u201990s era U.K. underground via sets from Underworld, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, all of whom bent electronic music to harder, darker and more intense shapes during their heydays. There will also be U.S. artists whose work functioned as inflection points for the development of indie dance and dance punk \u2014 namely LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and Moby. The Rapture\u2019s performance comes towards the start of a reunion tour<\/a> happening fifteen years after the NYC group\u2019s last headlining run. Meanwhile Moby, who hasn\u2019t toured the U.S. extensively in years, will perform with a live band and run through much of his 1999 LP Play<\/em>, an album whose prolific syncing<\/a> helped introduce electronic music to a generation of young people living far from clubland.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese acts are matched by several of the moment\u2019s key scene stars, with the lineup\u2019s other big font names being Peggy Gou, Dom Dolla, Mau P and Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo playing as Anti Up.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe now have fans who\u2019ve been deep in the genre for 15-plus years, but 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the early days of electronic music being popular in the U.S.,\u201d says Bell, who in this era was booking shows for HARD in Los Angeles. \u201cBack then everyone was just learning about these artists for the first time. No one knew if Carl Cox was a new act or a legacy act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut with the people who got into dance music in this era now staring down middle age, \u201cpeople have had enough time to dig deeper into the history and really understand who the pioneers were and where these sounds came from,\u201d says Bell. \u201cThat\u2019s allowed acts like The Chemical Brothers and Underworld to have a stronger and larger U.S. fanbase than they had before.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTo wit, a new wave of demand for these acts manifested in The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy both drawing huge crowds at Coachella 2023 and 2025, respectively. Meanwhile Underworld\u2019s Boiler Room set from London has clocked 1.4 million views since it was put online three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I started in festivals, the acts that were being played on Spotify Mint [the streamer\u2019s mainstream dance playlist] were like, Alesso and Avicii,\u201d says Bell. \u201cIt was all progressive house and some dubstep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Mint now populated by artists like Sammy Virji, Fred again.., Sara Landry, Ki\/Ki and Kettama \u2014 all of who have played Portola in years past or who will be there this year \u2014 Bell says it\u2019s been \u201creally fun and rewarding to see the acts I work with who I\u2019ve considered left of center and really progressing the sound and the scene making their way up the ladder to be the artists Spotify Mint is programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Portola<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tPortola 2024<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tScott Hutchinson<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also the lineup contingent Bell lovingly and correctly refers to as \u201cthe divas.\u201d In 2023 this was Nelly Furtado, who performed her \u201900s-defining hits \u201cTurn Off the Light,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m Like a Bird,\u201d \u201cSay It Right\u201d and \u201cPromiscuous.\u201d Last year, Natasha Bedingfield drew a tightly packed crowd that included fellow lineup artist Four Tet, while performing her pop holy trinity of \u201cPocketful of Sunshine,\u201d \u201cThese Words\u201d and \u201cUnwritten.\u201d This year, Aguilera is teed up to deliver her own arsenal of generational anthems.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe knows what the assignment is,\u201d says Bell \u2014 who also places previous Portola artists like Cobrah, Slayyter and Charli xcx in this diva category, a realm of the lineup that will also be filled by Ravyn Lenae<\/a> this weekend.<\/p>\n

\n\tDelivering these pop moments has helped Portola carve out a kind of quirky, if-it-feels-good-do-it identity that also manifests on the event\u2019s Instagram, a channel that\u2019s often deliciously unhinged<\/a> and IYKYK funny<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s another part of the ethos of the festival,\u201d Bell says. \u201cIt\u2019s very serious music, but presented in a very unserious way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe social media team of ten includes Bell, other staffers at Portola\u2019s producer Goldenvoice (which also puts on Coachella) and a team from the marketing and creative agency Benchmob. The secret sauce is Bell\u2019s longtime friend Dashiell Driscoll, a comedy writer whose resume includes the After Midnight With Taylor Tomlinson <\/em>and a run at Funny or Die.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI call him our staff copywriter,\u201d says Bell. \u201cI have him write our e-blasts and captions. Working with a real comedy writer, I can say \u2018Hey, we need to tell people we\u2019re 100 days out from the festival,\u2019 and he comes back with 12 different ideas. (The idea the team ultimately went with was a \u201c100 types of people you\u2019ll meet 100 days from now at Portola,\u201d IG carousel<\/a> featuring 100 photos of many varieties of raver, along with Steve Harvey, Parker Posey, Ariana Grande, dogs, cats, a goose and other individuals with that special flair.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLet\u2019s be real,\u201d Bell continues. \u201cThere are a ton of festival social media pages and lots of other music pages and accounts that are all kind of similar. Anything I get that looks like something anyone else would post I\u2019m like, \u2018Come on, we an do better. Let\u2019s try a little harder.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis extra effort extends beyond the internet and even beyond the festival site. Call it the mad scientist in him, but Bell cites a \u201cstrange obsession\u201d of \u201calways wanting people to have programming or something to do at all times of the day. I don\u2019t expect everyone to do everything. It\u2019s more just having these options so people can choose their own adventure, whether they want to start early then go to the festival, or go to the festival then to an afterparty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year these afterparties are also happening before the fest. This is Portola\u2019s most robust year of tangential programming, with Portola-blessed clubs nights starting Thursday (Sept. 18) and extending clear through Monday at more than ten local venues. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting that we could do upwards of 40,000-plus tickets a day at the festival, plus sell an additional 30,000 tickets for the after shows throughout the weekend,\u201d says Bell.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe goal is also to compliment what\u2019s happening musically with Portola picks of things to do around with, with the festival partnering with<\/a> a variety of restaurants, clothing shops and fitness centers. \u201cOne of Portola\u2019s main concepts is just reminding people about how amazing San Francisco is,\u201d Bell says, \u201cand not just as a city to live and visit, but also as a place to party. We really want to bring the city to life over these four days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yes, Bell is already working on the spreadsheet for next year. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery festival booker has their own process,\u201d says Danny Bell, the founder and booker of San Francisco\u2019s Portola. \u201cMine is definitely more mad scientist-y than other people\u2019s.\u201d Related Dance Festival Portola Avoided Using 6,053 Gallons of Diesel at Its 2024 Event. Here\u2019s How\u00a0\u00a0 Chris Cornell Sings Rihanna Song With Daughter Toni in Sweet Throwback Video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}