Exploring Miami, from Cuban clubs to sunrise raves
Happy Tuesday, Seeker readers.
We don’t want to alarm you, but apparently a new month starts on Wednesday. We know. We were as shocked as you are.
It also means that — if you were lucky enough to get tickets — you’ve got about two months to plan your trip to Irvine, California, for Olivia Rodrigo’s just-announced festival, Daisy Chain Fields. The one-day event features an incredible women-led lineup, pairing modern stars like Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, Doechii and KATSEYE with ’90s indie/alt greats Bikini Kill, The Breeders and Garbage — plus special appearances from Stevie Nicks, Karen O and Sarah McLachlan, whose Lilith Fair helped inspire this new fest.
Would you believe tickets sold out in 30 minutes? Yeah, you probably would.
We’ll have more fests to shout out in a special festival edition of The Seeker, hitting your inboxes this Thursday.
Of course, if you’ve downloaded the Music Roadtrip app, you can see what festivals are on the horizon anytime you want.
It’s a free guide to the venues, record stores, museums, landmarks and hidden corners that give a town its sound and its soul. It’s available for free download on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
OK, on to this week’s destination. It’s been lovely digging into tiny summer escape towns over the last few weeks, but it’s time for a music scene that’s on fire 365 days a year.
Miami, Florida
Let’s get the clichés out of the way: the ultra-sleek clubs, the mile-long yachts, the bottle-service bill that could put your house in foreclosure. Miami deserves some of that reputation. But step outside the velvet ropes, and you’ll discover one of the deepest music scenes in the country.
This is where Cuban exiles turned Little Havana into a hotbed of salsa and Afro-Cuban rhythm; where Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine made “Conga” a pop smash; and where the first trunks were rattled by 2 Live Crew and other Miami bass legends. It’s a city that never stops dancing, whether you’re grabbing cocktails in a neon-lit courtyard or packed shoulder to shoulder under a massive disco ball.
Welcome to Miami. We’d better get moving.
Hoy Como Ayer
Hoy Como Ayer takes its name from a bolero by legendary Cuban singer Benny Moré. In English, it translates to “Today Like Yesterday” — fitting for a club that carries on the cultural traditions of Calle Ocho. This stretch of Southwest Eighth Street has been the cultural spine of Little Havana since Cuban exiles started arriving here en masse in the 1960s.
Hoy Como Ayer fills its dancefloor by leaning into salsa dura, merengue, pachanga and other styles that have long fueled the neighborhood’s nightlife.
The club’s original 20-year run came to an end in 2019 when its lease ran out, but in 2024, it reopened with expanded spaces, a reinvigorated cocktail menu and a lively calendar featuring both live acts and DJs — sometimes simultaneously, as “DJ-and-timbalero” nights combine record-spinning with live Latin percussion.
Today like yesterday, right? Whether the person onstage has a set of decks or a set of timbales, one thing’s for sure: this crowd is here to dance.
Club Space
Where’s the best place to see the sunrise in Miami? If you ask us, it’s not from the pier at South Pointe Park. It’s not from the sands of Key Biscayne. It’s on the upstairs Terrace at Club Space, as the low end of a deep house groove rattles your fillings, and the retractable roof reveals a pink-orange sky.
Club Space is one of the rare U.S. clubs with a 24-hour liquor license. Parties can literally go on for days, but that culture doesn’t make the music take a backseat. The club’s official motto is “respect the dancefloor” — a night (or morning) here is about a communal experience, not social clout.
That approach draws in respected names — Masters at Work, Danny Tenaglia, Boris Brejcha, Damian Lazarus, Claptone, Hannah Wants and Vintage Culture will all take the decks in the coming months — as well as a stable of residents who keep the scene moving between the marquee weekends.
ZeyZey Miami
Miami New Times named ZeyZey the city’s Best Outdoor Event Venue, and earning that nod in a city crawling with open-air spaces is no small feat. We get it. On the right night, this three-year-old venue feels like a warm hang in your friend’s backyard — if your friend built a proper stage, strung up the lights and installed a sound system powerful enough to send the neighborhood Nextdoor thread into crisis mode.
Cozy as it is, ZeyZey also drives home Miami’s role as an international cultural crossroads. One stretch of listings can carry you from Brazilian jazz legend Marcos Valle to indie shapeshifter Cat Power, from Chicago house veterans Robert Owens and Derrick Carter to Salsa Z and a Fania Records takeover, from Afro-Brazilian soul to Colombian pop to Japanese psych.
You don’t get bookings that bold and wide-ranging by accident. ZeyZey is the rare venue with its own Substack, using it to document music and community worth celebrating rather than just blast out ticket links. Through the writing and through the nights themselves, you can feel the difference with this place.
Miami Beach Bandshell
What’s a music-fueled trip to Miami without an evening by the shore? Set in North Beach just off Collins Avenue, the Miami Beach Bandshell sits just a few steps from the sand and can be reached on foot or by bike along the oceanfront Beachwalk. That makes it one of the easiest places in the city to pair live music with a sense of the real Miami Beach, not the hotel lobby version.
The Bandshell works as both a community gathering place and a serious music venue, pairing free World Cup watch parties and a July 4th Roller Disco with a calendar that stretches from bomba y plena and cumbia to Brazilian MPB, electro-funk, jazz fusion, indie rock, Afro-Cuban music and French-Cuban duo Ibeyi.
Sweat Records
It may be called Sweat Records, but even Miami’s favorite record store can’t get away without air conditioning.
Back in 2009, when the Little Haiti shop needed to replace its AC system, it held a fundraiser and drew the kind of guest of honor most record stores only dream about: Iggy Pop. The punk legend had already been championing Sweat for years, and he kept showing up, even hanging out at the store’s annual block party when it happened to fall on his birthday.
“I love how much he loves Miami,” owner Lauren “Lolo” Reskin once said. “He really gets what is so wonderful about living here.”
You could say the same about Sweat.
Opened in 2005 by Reskin and Sara Yousuf, Sweat was a bet that Miami still needed a real record store, even as physical music retail was supposedly dying.
Today, it carries new and used vinyl, turntables, zines, local merch and plenty of records obscure enough to elude your algorithm. It also hosts all-ages events, runs an in-house label, buys collections and helps keep the city’s everyday music community connected.
More in Miami
Lagniappe
Midtown wine garden with nightly live music, grilled food and a relaxed outdoor setup.
Ball & Chain
Historic Calle Ocho bar with Cuban food, cocktails, salsa, jazz and an outdoor pineapple stage.
Cubaocho Museum & Performing Arts Center
Little Havana museum, bar and performance space focused on Cuban art, music and culture.
Dante’s HiFi
Wynwood vinyl listening bar with DJ sets, high-end sound and a huge record collection.
Domicile
Allapattah dance club focused on underground techno and electronic music.
Technique Records
Independent record shop specializing in rare, used, imported and collectible vinyl.
Criteria Recording Studios
Working studio and Miami music landmark tied to James Brown, Fleetwood Mac, the Bee Gees and more.
Café La Trova
Little Havana Cuban restaurant and cocktail bar with live music and cantinero tradition.
Mac’s Club Deuce
Long-running South Beach dive bar with neon, pool tables and jukebox.
The Cleat
Key Biscayne waterfront restaurant/bar inside Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
Miami’s main destination marketing organization, with visitor info, events and trip-planning resources at MiamiAndBeaches.com.
