Sacramento DJs bring silent disco to life at State Fair, aim for more Cal Expo hits
As smoke filled the dimly lit concrete dance floor, more than 50 DJs powered 17 days of high-energy sets inside the Super Secret Silent Disco exhibit at the California State Fair.
For entry, fairgoers had to scan a QR code or text “SSS Disco” to a phone number. They were then given special light-up headphones with three switchable DJ channels. The air-conditioned bar and lounge in Expo Building 1 ran daily through the State Fair, which ended Sunday.
The blue channel streamed house music, red pumped hip-hop and R&B, and green delivered family-friendly throwbacks.
“I really enjoyed being able to share my music taste with the younger generation for once,” said Geneva Brown, known as DJ Genetixx. “I play a lot of nightlife gigs, I feel like playing for a new audience was really cool.”
Brown made her exhibit debut July 15, spinning 80s hits like “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire and 2000s pop like “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 on the green channel.
As the sun set and the fair wound down, she noticed a cross-generational mix — families, teens, and kids — filling the dancefloor. Brown, a Sacramento native, has DJed for 13 years and brands herself as an open-format artist.
“I play all genres, from EDM to hip-hop, R&B, drum and bass, Jersey club and pretty much anything that people request,” she said. Speaking on Sacramento’s music scene, she called it laid-back and diverse. “We still like to throwback to the early 2000s. Sometimes it feels like we’re in a loop.”
Both of her parents worked in music — her father a producer, her mother a DJ — and taught her to spin at age 12 or 13.
“I feel like it’s so important that we’re not trying to monopolize these spaces,” she said. “And making sure that we’re making a fun and collaborative environment not just for the DJs, but also the people that are listening.”
With nearly nine years of local gigging under her belt, Brown played at clubs like Tiger Bar and Restaurantwhere she connected with Tony Christ and Robbie Metcalf, Tiger’s owners and creators of the Super Secret Silent Disco.
“I knew Tony growing up — he’s the son of my mom’s friend — and we had known each other for a while,” Brown said. “When my mom started DJing downtown again, she re-introduced herself to the scene and found Tony was managing a club.”
Eventually, Christ and Metcalf founded HERE, formerly HOF, a 17-year-old music collective and said this year’s 171st State Fair was a great opportunity to work with and showcase all of the most prominent, active local DJs.
The duo wanted to shift the perception that Sacramento lacked entertainment, especially after high school when many peers left for Los Angeles or New York.
“We’re always about reinventing things, taking a platform and doing it our way,” Christ said. “We grew up going to the State Fair as kids, and it’s always been a place to showcase the top things in California over time.”
Though silent discos have appeared at the fair before, this was the first year HERE controlled the dancefloor. “That’s where we came up with building this exhibit inside the space, showcasing our art and other local artists, putting a bar in there, and giving it this speakeasy feel,” Christ said.
To him, the activation was more than a dance party. Easter eggs tucked around the venue connected to the art and installations lining the walls, each piece telling part of HERE’s story.
“They’ve got some of the strongest DJs in Sacramento,” said Douglas Kishiyama, also known as DJ Yama. “It’s cool to see everyone in this environment, being able to show their creativity and do it all in one place.”
Kishiyama’s DJ journey started in high school and paused for a decade before reconnecting with H.E.R.E in 2023 through a family connection. He now DJs regularly at Tiger.
While hip-hop and R&B are his foundation, Kishiyama has branched into Afrobeats and funk. He said Sacramento’s music scene had been static but was evolving.
“Different genres and styles are starting to get subgenres that people really enjoy,” he said. “It’s really focusing on people who have a certain ear for certain music. They’re getting heard, too, and they’re getting seen.”
This was his first time performing at the State Fair. “It’s really cool to have that creative outlet and to have it be appreciated,” he said.
DJ Eddy, whose real name is Edrianna Regelbrugge, said spinning at the fair — where she had been a lifelong attendee — brought a rush.
“A lot of people don’t even know what a silent disco is,” she said, referring to messages she received about her Instagram stories. “Even in different cities in California, down in L.A., they don’t have silent disco like that.”
Regelbrugge started DJing in 2020 and moved to Los Angeles to expand her career. She founded PLUSH, a Sacramento-based DJ collective, in 2022.
“When I first started DJing, Robbie (Metcalf) actually reached out to me to join the HERE collective,” she said. She joined in 2021 and soon built a name for herself.
She credited her musical passion to her mom and grandfather, and said HERE gave her an early foothold in Sacramento’s creative scene.
“A lot of the DJs I end up playing with are really close friends of mine, so it’s just one big family reunion, and we’re all just playing music that we love,” she said.
For Regelbrugge, silent disco was a shared joy: “It unites different people of all ages through music, just to have fun together. I’m a DJ. I play what people love to hear. I know how to read a room and I play what I love to hear.”
Although she doesn’t stick to one genre, she’s best known for spinning old-school funk and R&B: “I always tell upcoming DJs, don’t box yourself into one category. There are so many events you can adapt to.”
She closed out the fair on the red channel on Sunday, her second time DJing at the fairgrounds.
To long-time fairgoers, Christ said, having the fair’s only air-conditioned bar felt like striking gold.
“I really love Cal Expo as well, the space we’re in was built in 1968 and it’s just one of my favorite buildings at the exhibit hall,” Metcalf said of the exhibit hall’s brutalist-styled architecture. “To be able to produce something inside of it was an honor, and I wish people knew more about Cal Expo and (how) they built this to be a futuristic city back in the ’60s.”
Metcalf said that the collective was looking for similar event spaces outside of Cal Expo. For HERE, the Super Secret Silent Disco is a step in that direction.
This story was originally published July 28, 2025 at 8:13 AM.
