March 27 - The drama came to Miami
Before we talk about Monday night, we gotta take a look at some actions that occured at The 3 Chairs party the night before. I had left the place before Hanna Haïs’s live performance. Various sources reported that after her PA, a well known DJ from Chicago took the microphone and made some comments stating that this wasn’t Black music, and that this kills Black music, which brought a bad mood to the party.
Gladly, the situation could be de-escalated and the good mood came back. However this left some bad feelings among many as these statements were taken by some as racism.
Back to Monday night, the City Deep party could not start on time as there was a tree falling down that could have caused a risk to the public and needed to be removed first. As this took some time, I decided to go and take a look at the Shelter party which was taking place in two rooms at Shine (part of the "Shelbourne Ressort" hotel). While the small room was opened early, people were waiting for the opening of the big room where Timmy Regisford would play. A lot of others were also waiting outside the hotel for the party to start.That day also had the Jamie Lewis presents Miami All Stars party taking place in the evening at the Delano Hotel, but I did leave early as the temperature went down fast and I started to freeze. After getting something to eat, I went to the Cha Cha Project party and later to the Phuture Sole & Slaag party which both suffered from the fact that there were too many events going on at the same time, including three big ones: Shelter, OM Records and Cielo.This led to a situation that these two smaller parties had not much attendance although people definitely missed the fantastic one hour long live performances by Remedy, John Pierce, Diamond Temple and Dawn Tallmann at the Phuture Sole & Slaag party which can ony be described as being off the hook and will remain among my favorite moments of this year’s Miami conference.
Back at the Miami gathering on its whole (although there are still some parties on tonight and tomorrow), the whole situation as far as all these events are concerned needs definitely a change. I mean, many DJ’s played almost every day, and their sets were mostly
only one or two hours long, so what the interest??? But also I wonder about the need of regular parties being taken down to Miami such as Roots, Cielo and Shelter out of NYC. This no doubt added to the fact that there were far too many parties, meanwhile the big ones kept people from checking out things held by smaller labels and DJs and, as a result, this led to a situation where we haven’t had a single event where everybody would come as one.
Let’s hope once again that next year will bring a change for the better.
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