Haitian singer Arly Larivière of Nu-Look is bringing konpa music to the Kaseya Center in Miami with a full orchestra on Friday, September 25, 2026.
Ricardo Saint-Cyr
Courtesy of
The Haitian crooner and bandleader Arly Larivière knows a few things about getting people onto a dance floor. For more than three decades, his romantic ballads and hits have provided the soundtrack for couples swaying cheek-to-cheek to the sensual gouyad of konpa rhythms.
Until now, however, those performances have largely occurred in intimate settings where the music has mostly thrived: smaller nightclubs and ballrooms.
On Friday, Larivière, who fans call “maestro” and is the lead singer and songwriter of popular South Florida based band Nu-Look, is taking the sound somewhere it’s never been – and onto one of its biggest indoor stages yet.
He’s bringing his live orchestral show, “Konpa En Symphony,” to the Kaseya Center in downtown Miami, the final U.S. stop in an ambitious concert series that pairs his familiar repertoire from more than a half dozen albums with guitars, violins, cellos and a full orchestra.
The arena, home to the Miami Heat, is accustomed to international stars like Bad Bunny and Andrea Bocelli. But never has it played host to konpa, the homegrown dance music that blends slowed-down merengue rhythms, Haitian percussion and distinctive bras and guitar arrangements.
“Today, what we are doing is putting the country on the map, placing the country’s music on the map,” Larivière said. “It’s about a culture, a music that’s benefitting.”
In other words, it’s about elevating Haitian music while also offering fans a moment of respite during what he and others recognize as a difficult period for the community both in the United States and back home.
“Even when people think we’ve been defeated, there is always one last thing we do to show we are not,” Larivière told the Miami Herald, shortly after receiving encouraging news from the Miami venue about ticket sales.
Significant moment for konpa
Larivière’s tour has unfolded at a particularly significant moment for konpa, which was created in 1955 by Haitian saxophonist and bandleader Nemours Jean-Baptiste and marked its 70th birthday last year. Decades later, the syncopated rhythm remains one of Haiti’s most enduring cultural exports.
In March of last year, a reunited Carimi, one of the genre’s most popular boy bands, performed at the Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise in a sign of konpa’s growing reach beyond clubs and ballrooms where it built its following.
Then in December, UNESCO recognized the music as an important expression of Haitian identity and cultural influence, adding “The Compas of Haiti” — using its French spelling — to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
In its application for the honor, the team lead by Haiti’s then UNESCO ambassador, Dominique Dupuy, described the music as transcending “social classes, forging a unique characteristic with Haitian identity.” UNESCO, in turn praised it as music that “brings together people of all ages, genders and backgrounds.”
Haitian singer Arly Larivière of Nu-Look is bringing konpa music to the Kaseya Center Center in Miami with a full orchestra on Friday, September 25, 2026. Ricardo Saint-Cyr Courtesy of
Larivière’s late father, Daniel, was an early pioneer of the music. Alongside Pierre Féquière Joseph, known as “Giordani Joseph,” they made the band Orchestre Tropicana one of Haiti’s most distinctive sounds. They still perform today.
With such a pedigree , Larivière, born in Cap-Haïtien, has always been in tune with what konpa fans want, which helped birth the idea of slowing down its tanbou, congas, trumpets and distinctive electric guitar lines and casting the beats against a full orchestra.
“It’s something that was always there, that I used to flirt with,” he said.
Larivière recalled a 2015 performance with the Haitian band Klass in New York, when dressed in a pastel-colored jacket, he sang “Why Do You Say You Love Me,” accompanied by a conductor guiding the string orchestra.
Then in 2023, he returned to the stage, this time performing with a philharmonic orchestra in Boston.
Miami is the fifth U.S. stop, and with that comes the concert series’ largest venue and largest community of Haitians. Launched first in Boston in November, the series has been showcased in New York, Orlando and most recently Quebec, Canada where Larivière performed on Sunday. All the cities have large communities of Haitians.
In Quebec, the artist was joined on stage with about 40 musicians. In Miami, he’s expects that number to nearly double.
“We’re going to be like 70-something people on stage,” Larivière said.
Haiti is in the plans but not easy
Larivière plans to take the series to Paris in December and hopes to eventually bring it to Haiti, where the country’s ongoing instability continues to pose a challenge for musicians who have long relied on the country as both a market for their music, and a source of inspiration.
“Every time we go to Haiti, it’s love that take us here,” he said. “It’s a sentiment that take us there because the conditions are truly difficult.”
Larivière notes that even traveling across the country has become complicated. “Just to go from the north of Haiti to the south, you have to go by plane,” he said. “There is no way for you to take the road.”
Then there is the economics. Musicians are trying to operate in country where audiences earn in Haitian gourdes but staging a performance is done in U.S. dollars.
“Haitian musicians face a lot of challenges at this moment because we really do have love for what we are doing,” he said. “We love our country, we love our culture, and we’re always thinking we have a message, we have a job to connect people” through the music.
‘Gouyad era’ and konpa’s generational shift
For an artist who has spent much of his career performing in familiar places, Kaseya Center represents an opportunity for Larivière to show what not only what else Haitian musicians can do, but also that konpa can occupy the same stage as other musical genres.
This is not lost on fans or those in the business of promoting Haitian music.
“It’s a historical moment for us here in South Florida and all over,” said Terry Louis, co-producer of Sounds of Little Haiti, the musical series that brings konpa artists to the Little Haiti Cultural Complex each month. “We’re just proud of how far we’ve come along with konpa, and how now we’re able to do bigger and better venues.”
Louis, who is bringing Haitian songstress Emeline Michel to Little Haiti on Oct. 16 as part of his monthly third Friday music series, said konpa is undergoing a generational transformation.
A younger crop of artists, many of them Haitian Americans, are touring with the music, and experimenting with its sound. Some have dubbed the current moment as the “gouyad era,” a reference to the sensual dance that has become increasingly popular in the music’s younger incarnation.
“The younger Haitian Americans are embracing konpa more than ever,” Louis said. “They are taking this to a different level.”
‘A beautiful moment for the culture’
It is this evolution that Larivière hopes to tap into with his “Konpa En Symphony,” which he hopes brings out not just the traditional band-circuit fans who have routinely crowded dance floors, but their parents, children and even people who may be unfamiliar with the sound.
For Cassandre Dorcely, a longtime fan of the artist, the concert is already more than just about the music.
“I grew up in the U.S. listening to Haitian music, but I truly fell in love with it when I first heard Arly singing, ‘Why Do You Say You Love me,” said Dorcely, a certified registered nurse anesthetist. “I have all of his albums and have been to countless bals, dancing to the emotional ballads and Nu-Look hits.”
With her floor seats purchased and gown chosen — Larivière notes fans are planning to glam up for the evening — Dorcely says she is looking forward to Friday’s performance, which the singer hints will also feature a few surprises.
“Seeing a Haitian jazz artist perform in a major arena fills me with so much pride,” Dorcely, who lives in Davie, said. “What a beautiful moment for our culture.”
If You Go:
When: Friday, Sept. 25
Time: 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m.
Where: Kaseya Center, 601 Biscayne Blvd.
Cost: $84 to $536 for floor seats; Tickets available at Ticketmaster
Miami Herald
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.