From Florida, With Love: The Spirit of BIG Culture and Arts Festival

I stood eye-to-eye with Tampa duo They Hate Change as they shattered the land speed record for most words a duo has ever rapped without breaking eye contact or breathing while dressed as industrial painters. Vonne Parks and Dre Gainey’s pounding mix of grime, ghetto tech, and footwork colored the air as they blurred down the middle of the sticky, 80-person crowd clustered inside an empty clothing store called How Bazar. It was day one of BIG Culture and Arts Festival, a three-day sensory overloading carnival stacked with more than 100+ musicians and headlined by Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist, and Mavi, all shoehorned into a quarter-mile bubble of Gainesville, Florida.

How Bazar wasn’t the main stage; in terms of capacity, the traffic cone-colored building was probably the fourth biggest venue employed by the festival. But for the last 51 weeks, it doubled as BIG Fest HQ for local organizers Laila Forkoury, Khary Khalfani, and Jahi Khalfani, who deputized a trusted crew of friends, volunteers, and long term collaborators.

The trio came together in 2018 to found Don Dia Records, an umbrella company combining a dedication to art of all disciplines with social work. First came platforming local talent through silent discos, art exhibits, and traditional concerts. Then, the opportunity to lead music recording programs for prisoners and terminal care patients at local hospitals. Soon followed How Bazar, the worker-owned clothing store-slash-bar-slash-venue that would travel across the state for clothing festivals and their own fashion shows. After a meeting in 2022 with Atlanta multi-hyphenate Zack Fox, BIG Fest would open in 2023.

On this opening Friday, as the sun finally tired out of whipping our asses all afternoon, a Fast & The Furious-style car show sparkled under the streetlights next to How Bazar’s entrance. From the far corner of the grounds, rays of baby blue and pink spilled out around the exposed lumber of a half-built tiny home acting as a swampy rave hideout. A market of clothing vendors hawking custom logo tees and vintage NASCAR merch buzzed on, but buzzing louder was the sound of tattoo guns detailing folks by the dozens on a folding table next to a screening of an experimental student film. A fresh graduating class of clowns and fire dancers contorted atop multiple platforms while the flags of Sudan, Palestine, and the Congo flapped freely above the sea of fans.

Everyone who stepped through the security line played a role in this collectivism concert. Miniature microphones and iPhones strapped to tripods flanked the walkways, with interviewers taking the time to do impromptu vertical content with artists and fans alike. The Larry King of FaceTime interviews, EricTheYoungGawd, conducted interviews with Papo2oo4 while Sydni of Chicago’s Real Ones Show popped the biggest question possible to fans; “What type of Florida Man are you?” With every laugh and hot take the invisible walls separating performers, creators, and fans dissolved, opening up pipelines for coalition building under the shade of oak trees and taco trucks.

Inside the Atlantic, a dive bar with the strongest A/C unit known to man holding one of the festival’s many stages, a three-piece band of middle schoolers named Youth Ambulance shook the dead with their unvarnished iteration of punk music. It was endearing to see performers visibly nervous, but still deeply trusting in the power chords to cover for them. While stained glass style paintings depicting Prince and David Bowie smiled down from the walls, the underpriced, overstrong mixed drinks let parents and patrons alike headbang in peace. The rawness of their youth and warm roar from the crowd created the purist set of the weekend.

The tavern’s entrance was hidden in the shadows of the BIG Stage, home to countless photographers flashing press passes in hopes of getting the closest shots of everyone from neo-soul songstresses Purple Essence to the living semi-conductor ZeeloperZ. As dusk set in, Kelly Moonstone, a brash Brooklynite in the mold of Jill Scott, caught spirits on this stage performing her ex-slamming anthems and self-motivating poetry with a vocal beauty that studio mics just can’t quite capture. Enthralled by her performance, Jersey super producer subjxct5 stood amongst the crowd with middle fingers up, screaming “fuck that n—-” like he was the one cheated on.

With most of the performers being niche stars of “if you know you know” fame, cameos like this littered the weekend. Sideshow, fresh off releasing the best rap album of the year, fiddled through clothing racks before faking a phone call to duck the crowd surrounding him. AKAI SOLO, the most brolic rapper this side of an LL Cool J NCIS commercial, cherished his joint around the side of the mainstage, pausing for the occasional fan photo. YL sat deep in the cut of zayALLCAP’s set, raising his cup in the air in approval as the art pop superstar tore the How Bazar stage down. Walking toward the parking garage at the close of night one, ISSLA was passing the time posing for photos as her (or a friend’s, or a fan’s?) blown-out tire was replaced.

The BIG Stage also became a pulpit to both 00Jordie and Mavi as they closed out Friday night. 00Jordie’s DJ set, infused with diasporic Latin flavors, hit its crescendo with Bad Bunny’s “DtMF.” As Benito’s swaying chants echoed over the crowd, dozens of flags, family photos, signs, and bedazzled jackets representing nations affected by American imperialism—Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic—flooded the stage, showcased by Latino artists and fans. One sign reading “We are living proof” waved amongst the powerful totems, a stance against ICE and the attempted erasure of immigration from being a pillar of this nation’s existence.

Mavi’s set, the night’s true finale, was its own tearjerking affair. Channeling the showmanship of James Brown Mavi writhed in pain, crawling to the crowd like a sinner does a church altar for forgiveness, performing through a strained voice the already will testing “Book Of Job”. He ran the gamut of emotions with “Self Love” and “Triple Nickle” over his 40 minute set before sending us off with a karaoke session of MF DOOM’s “One Beer” surrounded by Pink Siifu, Ovrkast., zayALLCAPS, and AntoneNow, hitting their best rap hands in unison from the side stage.

Saturday started with me getting blinded by The Alchemist’s diamond pinky ring from the back of the line for his cash only vinyl pop up. Allegedly Anysia Kim was on stage performing by the time we got close enough to cop a signed poster, but the Tony Seltzer beats banged so loud who’s to say who was singing under them. It was here I met the crew of Bonita Springs high schoolers behind Bliss Magazine. Harry Torrez, the main man behind Bliss and the fledgling multi-media company Stamey, took pride in being the foremost rookie covering the event. “Our magazine is only digital right now. We’re still working everything out of the PicsArt app on my phone, but we’re here.”

Deeper on the grounds stood an all white cargo hitch lined with paintings. Magnetized to the outer wall was a work by Cletuskills, a skater and painter from St. Petersburg, Florida, whose maximalist work was brighter than kindergarten decorations but nightmarishly haunting. Sucking the soul out of a cig next to him was Naples’ clothing designer DEJ, with a custom oversized white tee with “FUCK ICE” and “FUCK TRUMP” hand drawn on its back. Curated by Omar Bloomfield, the exhibit was centered less on style, personal connections, or “what can just sell” but rather “artists trying to get out a true emotion.” Even something as simple as a painting of the Avengers, displayed battered, bruised, and dragging cigs of their own, was a play on exhaustion. For us consumers, being forced to see these mutants on the big screen every summer turned once appointment viewing into forced labor to keep up with coworkers. For the multiverse heroes themselves, the aura of fatigue was attached to being trotted out in their own worlds as defenders for a thankless society.

Come Saturday Night, Earl Sweatshirt, zooted to the heavens, cranked out “Vin Skully,” “Charli 2na,” “ Exhaust,” and “E. Coli,” with stoic confidence as the closer of the late night showings. By Sunday the BIG Stage would be gone as networking and smaller performances from Redveil and Little Giver finalized the weekend odyssey. In many ways, Earl was never out of sight from the moment the gates opened on Friday until their closure on Sunday. He was the spirit animal of this entire weekend. Across his many arcs as fearless wunderkid, hermetic vicenarian, to now beaming road dog and father, Earl intentionally controlled his destiny, creating with whoever could ride his wavelength, spotlighting anyone close to the frequency. Now, BIG Fest was becoming the same for the Don Dia and How Bazar crews, pulling hordes of folks from across the country yearning to do right with what resources were in their grasp.

It was in the back of the art trailer that the busiest woman in Florida, Laila herself, appeared and spoke about why the events from Don Dia’s early days were able to blossom into a festival teeming with life. “The shows were so crazy because they were hip-hop and R&B, and Gainesville didn’t have that. Our first show we got 125 people, then 200, then 400. It started building all this community. People flocked to them because they filled this gap that we felt. We saw the need and the necessity of it.”

Naturally, the deeply conservative community members who govern every aspect of Floridian life have pushed back. Before exponential growth became the norm, venues rejected their rap shows, city officials complicated simple events, and smear campaigns disparaged Laila, a Palestinian-Lebanese organizer, as having “expressed support for a terrorist and spread hatred of Israel.” Fueled to find a way through the mudslinging, this weekend-long, eight-stage block party in which her crew was a central player has laid a living blueprint for navigating an art world littered with road blocks.

Americans compartmentalize. But seeing so many flags alongside handfuls of keffiyehs each day, while artists created space in their sets to call out nations and oppressed people struggling for sovereignty in the face US interference, made it impossible to ignore our own complicity—or to see collective expression and appreciation of art as a force equipped to unite us in service of something better.

In the middle of our talk Laila received a call, leading her to jog out of the unit toward the main stage. There’s really no free time to look back when the stakes are this high.