Join us for a night of music reflecting on artist Gary Simmons’s sculptural installation, Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. DJs Walshy Fire and Jason Panton have teamed up to present an evening that brings the Jamaican sound system experience to Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Jason of City Heat Sound and DJ KM of Prodigy Sound will take the stage for some friendly competition sure to start your Miami Music Week off right.
About City Heat Sound
City Heat Sound was established 1994 in Miami, FL, and is currently one of the top sound clash systems in Florida. City Heat is well known and has a well-balanced fan base from the days of the Clint O’Neil show in the ‘90s to the nowadays online platforms for sound system culture. City Heat is represented by Daddy Sox, who is one of the best sound clash emcees from Florida. City Heat is a force to be reckoned with in both the dancehall and sound clash arenas.
About Jason Panton
Jason Panton is a multi-talented creator, designer, entrepreneur, brand developer, DJ, and Grammy-Nominated A&R. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Panton has leveraged his dynamic understanding of culture and weaved it into unique brands, spaces, and collaborations that have made him a name worthy of mention within contemporary culture of Jamaica, Miami, and the African Diaspora.
He is the founder of international event brand Dubwise (2013) that has hosted the likes of David Rodigan, King Jammy’s, Chronixx, Stone Love, and many more. His first Grammy Nomination in 2021 came from his work as an A&R on the Jesse Royal album “Royal.” He is the founder of the first vegetarian friendly food court and cultural hub located in Kingston called the Dubwise Cafe, which has been featured in Vogue Magazine as a must visit location in Jamaica. He has toured the world as Dubwise playing for crowds topping 30,000 people.
The Shrine, an Afrobeat party created in 2016, is an ode to his Rastafari Pan-African philosophy. Inspired by conversations with a few of his Nigerian family members, the goal was to bring together the sounds of the African continent mixed with riddims of the Caribbean. The Shrine has been identified as one of the best Afrobeats parties in America by Billboard Magazine.
About DJ K.M. and Prodigy Sound
DJ KM’s (Killa Mike) musical career started at an early age. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, KM played various instruments. After graduating high school, he moved to Florida where his interest in DJing began to flourish. Meeting up with a childhood friend in college (DJ Bigga Don), he taught KM how to play music of all genres. First starting off doing house parties and college parties, KM began to sharpen his skills until finally touching the club scene in 1995. Co-owner of a popular reggae sound, Prodigy Movements, KM and the team began to dominate the South Florida’s Caribbean market which allowed them to play not only locally but also overseas. With places like Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, Belize, St. Vincent, Switzerland, Spain, and England under the belt, there were no limits to where this passion can take him. Transitioning into the Florida hip-hop scene was the next challenge soon conquered by KM. Already opening for the likes of Jay-Z, Young Jeezy, Fat Joe, Big Pun, Mario, and acts like Mavado, Buju Banton, Beenie Man, and Sean Paul who are all in the Caribbean market, KM plans to continue providing musical excellences to the masses.
About the Black Ark
Gary Simmons’s sculptural installation Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark consists of a stage and speakers that, when activated, serve as a venue for live performances. The speakers are encased with wood salvaged from the streets of New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The objects bear the spray-painted traces of that history, just as they hold the memory of past performance activations.
The title of the work references Lee “Scratch” Perry’s legendary Kingston studio, the Black Ark, while the black star motif on the stage gestures toward the Black Star Line, a passenger vessel route launched in 1919 by the Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey as a way to facilitate personal and economic ties between Africa and Black people throughout the world.
These connections across time and space imbue Simmons’s platform with the suggestion of Black diasporic unity. Like Perry’s studio, much of which was constructed using repurposed materials and DIY fabrication, Simmons’s installation provides a platform for artists to come together and forge new sound out of reclaimed parts, symbolically actualizing Garvey’s dream of solidarity. The important role of music and dance in fulfilling this dream is further underscored by the motif’s allusion to the hip-hop duo Black Star, a collaboration between Mos Def and Talib Kweli.
Each time the work is installed, Simmons invites the exhibiting venue to program a performance series inspired by local performance histories. As Simmons explains, “At the end of [each] performance the speakers are left in place as a kind of ghost of that performance.”
