Day Trill: The Past, the Present and the Future

I sat down with the founders of Day Trill & stay silent PVD, Jason “WHERE’S NASTY” Almeida & Sabrina Chaudhary, and we spoke about the event’s past and present as well their hope for its future.

The first Day Trill came during stay silent’s first year of life. As day parties began to rise in popularity on a national scale, Almeida and Chaudhary aspired to include the Ocean State in the day party rave. After attending a number of day parties, they aimed to create their own that fulfilled their individual tastes and interests. As Chaudhary put it, “We didn’t want the traditional nightclub setting, but during the day time.” With help from Don King, founder of Providence’s Sound Session festival, Almeida and Chaudhary were able to add the necessary ingredients to begin the journey toward the Day Trill we have today, but it wasn’t always swag-surfs and electric slides for them.

The event’s first installment saw a turnout of 30 people, but they weren’t phased by the low turnout. Looking back, Chaudhary remembers how the first Day Trill was received. “Everyone that came through said, ‘This was fire! When’s the next one?’” Yet, as the event grew in popularity, they began to realize how much city input there would be in large outdoor events like this.

Before The Steel Yard, Day Trill took place in FMH’s parking lot and they realized that throwing a Day Trill on their own would be quite the task. Entrances, exits and the lot’s perimeter were just a few of the things they had to take into consideration while at FMH. It wasn’t until the first PVDFest in 2015 that things became more complicated than expected. At they event, they had a turnout of 2,000 people, and afterwards they received a lot of pushback from the city due to the unexpected high attendance. Almeida and Chaudhary said the pushback had undertones of, “There are so many people and there are so many black and brown people. Where is all of the security?” However, this served more as a hurdle than a roadblock for them. After meeting with the city, obtaining the necessary licenses and fulfilling other requirements, they were on their way toward the Day Trill we know now. While Chaudhary alluded to hardships with event, Almeida alluded to struggles with properly explaining to consumers exactly what Day Trill was, especially as it began to grow in popularity. “As it grew, certain needs and certain things changed for consumers to understand what this actually is,” he said.

Each year’s event featured a new idea or an expansion on a previous one. Throwing only one Day Trill in 2013, Chaudhary and Almeida took everything into consideration and returned the following summer with a few adjustments. Pushing the event a few hours back into the day and throwing three Day Trills helped the event achieve great success in 2014. By the summer’s last party, in August 2014, they reached capacity at FMH. “We brought boxes of pizza, like 50 boxes of pizza would just like show up in the middle of the party. We had a dunk tank, we were just trying different things.” They took the event’s production into their own hands in 2015, when they threw the Day Trill during PVDFest. August 2015’s installment was another huge success as they partnered with 40 Oz. Van for a 40 Oz.-Bounce collaboration. The following year they introduced a second location, taking to the Alex & Ani Center for the summer’s second Day Trill. Almeida recalls an old dream, “It was always a joke that myself and Hil Holla would always have, like, ‘This is gonna be so crazy we gonna do this downtown.’” Along with an increase in attention toward production, 2017 saw more DJs, both young and old and from around the region, such as DJ Dymand, DJ Lefty, & SuperSmashBroz.

I asked Almeida and Chaudhary what their favorite Day Trill memory was. Jay flashed back to the Day Trill that got rained out at FMH. Moving indoors, the event continued for rest of the night. After being allowed to continue well past the initial 10pm end time, Almeida and Born Casual, who DJ’ed this Day Trill with him, tapped out on turn up. “We got to like 10:45 and we were like, ‘Bruh.’ It got to like 11:30 and we’re like, ‘Yo, we’re done.’” Chaudhary has two memories from past Day Trills. The first goes back to 2014’s Day Trill, which featured an appearance from Boston’s own Cousin Stizz. As “Shoutout” from his 2015 mixtape Suffolk County blared from the speakers, the excitement from Stizz himself along with her own and the crowd’s excitement was something that stuck in her mind. Her second memory comes from the first Day Trill at the Alex and Ani Center. The skating center’s location provides an pleasing view of downtown Providence and with this came a sense of freedom and openness as well. “It felt like we weren’t hiding anymore; I think sometimes with hip-hop programming it feels like ‘Get in where you fit in’ because if the cops know, maybe it won’t happen.”

The 6th season of Day Trill is on the horizon, and planning has been going on all year. Almost all of creative ideas come sporadically throughout the year. As Almeida described it, “It’s a collection of thoughts and ideas in brainstorm over a whole year. It’s never like, ‘Yo, we’re gonna sit down and just talk about Day Trill.’”

Despite all the planning, Almeida and Chaudhary still receive criticism for a number of things, which in their eyes, just comes from a misunderstanding between themselves and the consumer. Almeida made it clear that their goal has never been to create events based on what the people want, but rather what they wanted. Jay compared themselves and Day Trill to a chef and their restaurant. “If I go to a restaurant, they put it on the menu like that because that’s the way they wanted it to be consumed. So when you go to that restaurant and start asking for substitutions, you’re taking away from the experience of what the chef wanted to create for you. I look at events in that [way].”

Chaudhary explained that she doesn’t allow herself to get too deep into people’s comments, good or bad. “If people are praising us, I can’t buy too deep into that and if people are giving us negative feedback I can’t buy too deep into that because we have a vision. But I’m thankful for both ends of it and it’s just what it is.”

From a musical standpoint, I asked Almeida and Chaudhary what songs they were most excited to hear this season. Almeida said Sheck Wes’ “Mo Bamba” is a track he’s excited to spin at Day Trill because track’s energy reminds him of Day Trill’s energy. He also said the track reminds him of the counterculture Day Trill was born in. Chaudhary is looking forward to communal dances like the swag-surf and the electric slide because of the feeling of family and community these songs bring. “If you know, you know and if you don’t you’re stuck on the corner staring, and that’s why we electric slide to Frankie Beverly & Maze and not to the Electric Slide song.”

If you’re wondering what to expect for this year’s Day Trill, heres some information from Jay himself: “Trust the menu.”

I ended our interview by asking Almeida and Chaudhary what their goals for the future are. Rather than create a new goal for attendance or a new goal for profit, their true goal is to have a long-lasting impact on the culture. To have Day Trill become synonymous with RI’s Dominican Festival and the Cape Verdean Festival would a great accomplishment, and if the event were to come to an end, to be compared to something like Rocky Point would be just as satisfying. “I want it to be like when you think about Providence summer, when you think about Rhode Island, when you think about New England summer, there’s these different events that you connect to that you’re like ‘Yo, I know in the summertime I HAVE to go to this.’”

Day Trill is far from slowing down, and the event growing to the point where it’s a large-scale, nationally known event would be amazing for the city. But until then, swag-surfs and electric slides at The Steel Yard will more than suffice.

Day Trill takes place Jun 30 from 4 – 10m, The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Ave, PVD; also check out stay silent’s Friday summer series, Super Casual at The Shack, Fridays from 6 – 9pm, 239 Dyer St, PVD