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Bernie Sanders held a rally and concert at the University of Iowa tonight with thousands of students, whom he urged to vote for him on Monday and “make the pundits look dumb.”

The students cheered Mr. Sanders, the senator from Vermont and self-described Democratic socialist, as he advocated a decriminalization of marijuana (though he urged students to “stay away from heroin”) championed women’s reproductive rights and slammed Wall Street.

But many of the thousands of students also showed up for the musical portion of the evening. (One band sang “It’s nothing to fear, you are a socialist too.”) The main attraction, beyond Mr. Sanders, was the indie rock group Vampire Weekend.

The group was introduced, memorably, by Cornel West, the public intellectual, artist behind the album Sketches of My Culture and surrogate for Mr. Sanders, as a great band in the tradition of Nina Simone and Bruce Springsteen.

After the concert and speech, Mr. Sanders, who once sang on a folk album, his wife, Mr. West, Vampire Weekend and others sang “This Land Is Your Land” together on stage.

Soon after, the Sanders campaign released a statement calling the event a “blast-the-rafters concert.”