{"id":224743,"date":"2026-04-09T12:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224743\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T12:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T12:17:08","slug":"arts-culture-festival-lures-miami-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224743\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts & Culture Festival Lures Miami Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than one set of stars aligned when Laila Fakhoury and Jahi Khalfani first met in a 2018 University of Florida astronomy<\/a> class.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one thing, both felt a calling toward community building in their adopted home of Gainesville<\/a>: Fakhoury \u2014 a Palestinian woman whose roots inform her belief that it is \u201cour duty to support our friends, our family, our neighbors, and uplift those around us\u201d \u2014 worked as a program coordinator at Ocala\u2019s Marion Correctional Institution and as a consultant and counselor at a crisis and suicide intervention center. Khalfani, meanwhile, had run nonprofit tech centers as well as after-school tutoring and financial literacy sessions. They both longed to merge their social justice work with the art, music, and cultural scenes around them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pair soon thereafter established Dion Dia Records<\/a> as a cultural, intersectional beachhead. \u201cWe just kind of found ourselves feeling very alone,\u201d Fakhoury tells New Times. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a lot of space to express ourselves, so we just decided to create that space and carve it out ourselves.\u201d Dion Dia didn\u2019t stop at releasing hip-hop and R&B records by local enlightened acts such as Casey Jones II and FARO; the label quickly expanded to silent discos, networking events, and live shows. It brought social good programs to end-of-life patients in the palliative care wing of the hospital and to people serving life sentences in the prison. \u201cThe first event had about a hundred people,\u201d Fakhoury says. \u201cThe next time there were 200. Then 300. And it kept growing and growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, Fakhoury and Khalfani expanded their vision to include the Big: Arts & Culture Festival, a boundary-obliterating visual\/sonic\/experiential smorgasbord set to take over a wide swath of downtown Gainesville this April 10 to 12. The festival\u2019s fourth iteration will span three outdoor stages and five venues, featuring headliners Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, Zack Fox & UWAY, Pink Siifu, and dozens more. Offstage, there will be a \u201cfull schedule of circus and aerialist performances, a film screening experience from Miami\u2019s Subtropic Film Festival<\/a>, visual art installations, live painting and screen printing, fashion shows featuring Florida designers and models, a car show, panel discussions on art and activism, [and] interactive workshops.\u201d Oh, and a parade \u2014 just for good measure.<\/p>\n

\"photoAerialists are just some of the many performers you\u2019ll see at Gainesville\u2019s Big Festival.<\/p>\n

Big in some ways represents a revival and expansion of Gainesville\u2019s already storied musical and cultural history, which encompasses acts ranging from Tom Petty<\/a>, Less Than Jake<\/a>, and Hot Water Music to Discount, Bo Diddley, and Fueled By Ramen, the emo-mainstreaming label formed by future Interscope CEO John Jannik in his University of Florida dorm room. \u201cThat\u2019s the Gainesville vibe \u2014 it\u2019s a very creative community,\u201d Fakhoury says. \u201cIt\u2019s very accessible, open, welcoming. It\u2019s forgiving, too. We call it a playground because it really is somewhere that you can experiment and explore. We didn\u2019t necessarily have a framework for Big, we just knew that Gainesville would be open to that kind of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That vibe has not stayed confined to Gainesville, though, with an ever-growing contingent of Miami movers, shakes, and art makers making the yearly trek to add what Khalfani calls \u201cwild Miami flavor\u201d to the Big gumbo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been there ever since its\u00a0inception \u2014 haven\u2019t missed a year!\u201d John Caignet<\/a>, founder of Miami\u2019s legendary station\/cultural hub Jolt Radio<\/a> (which livestreams the festival and connects it with Miami artists), says. \u201cWe\u2019ve always valued community greatly here at Jolt, and when Jahi and Laila reached out to us, we knew they were on to something\u2026big.\u201d He laughs. \u201cNo pun intended! I mean \u201cbig\u201d in the sense that they put their community first, and that was the beginning of a great friendship and relationship with\u00a0the\u00a0festival. Every year we pack our bags in April and head to Gainesville knowing that we\u2019re gonna have a blast, do the radio thing, and, of course, spin some records.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited to be a part of\u00a0Big because we truly believe in the folks organizing it,\u201d adds Tyriq, of Miami pop band 5loko. \u201cWe see this specific year of\u00a0the festival\u00a0as a\u00a0major\u00a0historical moment in the Florida music scene. The number of Florida-based indie, alternative, and hip-hop acts on the lineup is unreal, and the general curation is top-notch\u2026The amount of engagement that\u00a0Big\u00a0has been able to generate naturally is extremely impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big is about more than platforming rising and thoughtful established acts; it\u2019s about establishing a space in which the barrier between observer and participant is considerably more porous. The fashion show, for example, encourages attendees to model for the first time. The live painting and screen printing are similarly open. The vast majority of the media team are shooting a show or festival for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to have a reputation as a festival that is an incubator for new talent as much as it is a showcase for established talent,\u201d Khalfani says. \u201cWe are deliberately steering it as far away from elitism as we can get. We want Big to be a place where people can discover and try new things and walk away with a new air of confidence in their ability to create within their own lives. The whole purpose is to bring people together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s working: More than half this year\u2019s ticketholders are coming from outside of Alachua County, and half of that group is coming from out of state. (With the little spare time they have, Big organizers are compiling a Guide to Gainesville for visitors, full of recommendations for food, yoga, scenic bike rides, and more.) Last year, the county ran the one-day festival through its economic impact calculator and estimated it created more than $700,000 in economic impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PhotoAudiences are also participants in the performances at Big.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat working on Big has shown me is that if we all come together, if we bridge all of the different community groups in Gainesville and throughout Florida, there\u2019s endless potential to create real, positive alternative ways of living,\u201d says Khalfani, who, along with Fakhoury, has learned how to do everything from booking artists, production staff, and security to filing permits, graphic design, and putting up fencing. \u201cHow the music industry works \u2014 and, really, the way the majority of industries we all are in work \u2014 is so archaic and top-down and extractive in so many ways. It\u2019s anti-human. So, for us, to be more human-centered as opposed to capital-centered is hopefully a path to stabilize this ecosystem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raquel Lily, singer and guitarist of Miami indie band Buko Boys, is quick to add a hear, hear!<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re stoked to see Florida finally being put on the map for something that isn\u2019t a \u2018Florida Man does X\u2019 headline,\u201d Lily says. \u201cIt\u2019s empowering to get highlighted for something that we\u2019ve put in so many hours of work for. We\u2019re excited that the time is finally coming \u2014 and are extremely grateful for the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fakhoury mirrors those warm sentiments. \u201cHonestly, I get emotional thinking about how this little dream has not only become real but exceeded all our expectations in terms of impact on others,\u201d she says. \u201cSeeing other people validate and affirm that dream by wanting to put their own labor, love, and creativity into it has been the most surreal and fulfilling part of all this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than one set of stars aligned when Laila Fakhoury and Jahi Khalfani first met in a 2018…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[684,1943,123,125,124],"class_list":{"0":"post-224743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-events","9":"tag-festivals","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-headlines","12":"tag-miami-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}