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Miami Art Week Guide 2014: Best Music Events

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Music is the heartbeat of Art Basel week. From South Beach to Wynwood, the city streets exude soul-pounding bass, crescendos of funk, the juke-joint stomp of rhythm and blues and everything in between.

That aural mixture fuses with the energy of hundreds of thousands of awestruck participants, the art that surrounds them and the huge amounts of money that make it all happen.

The result is a one-of-a-kind milieu of technology, art, commerce, tourism and the cathartic release of everyone’s appreciation of it all. Especially locals.

Here are the top music events for Miami Art Week 2014.

Horsemeat Disco at Basement Miami
Ian Schraeger didn’t just have a hand in founding Studio 54 and the Delano Hotel. He also basically invented boutique hotels. And now he’s built a new hotel for Miami Beach. It’s called The Edition, and it includes a nightclub called The Basement that celebrates the vibrant bacchanal of disco-era revelry. Horsemeat Disco is a crew of dancefloor purists so wholeheartedly dedicated to the cause of good times that they gave themselves a name only Londoners could dream up. Their coalition of like-minded DJs are a force of rollicking floor-shake to be reckoned with.
Dec. 3, 10 p.m., Basement Miami, 2901 Collins Ave., Miami Beach. Price varies. basementmiami.com

Jungle Brothers with DJ Heron, Otto Von Schirach, DJ Tom Laroc, AK1200, and more at Freedom Whse 
The Jungle Brothers are a legendary New York City hip-hop group from the 1980s whose notoriety stems from their membership in the highly vaunted Native Tongues crew alongside A Tribe Called Quest. Their familial links to Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Red Alert are in fact genetic, and with their strident lyricism and innovative production, they’ve marked their place in history as a crucial, fundamental link to one of the strongest musical cultures in the world today.
Dec. 4, 10 p.m. - 4 a.m., Freedom Whse, 48 NW 25th St., Miami. $20-$25. wantickets.com 

2 Live Crew at The Stage
Fresh Kid Ice is the only member of the 2 Live Crew to appear on every album the group ever recorded. He co-founded the band while stationed at an Air Force base in Riverside, Calif. This after going to middle school and high school in Brooklyn in the late 1970s and early '80s and being born in Trinidad. Brother Marquis was just 18 years old when he moved to Miami from California in about 1986 to join the group. He also grew up in New York City. So for those who strictly think of the group as a Miami phenomenon, understand that before traveling to the Supreme Court to fight for free speech in music, they came of age during the genesis of hip-hop in the two American regions most closely associated with the genre. They are historic icons in bass music, rap, and free expression.
Dec. 4, 9 p.m., The Stage, 170 NE 38th St., Miami. $20-$30. thestagemiami.com

FKA Twigs with Clams Casino at YoungArts Campus
Breakout alt-pop artist FKA Twigs delivers a sort of post-punk, whispery R&B and has gained a lot of attention for the record she released earlier this year. In a string of debuts happening during this year’s Miami Art Week, this will be FKA Twigs' first show in Miami. She'll perform with underground hip-hop producer Clams Casino.
Dec. 4, 7 p.m., National YoungArts Campus, 2100 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. $25-$37. showclix.com

SBTRKT and ASAP Ferg at YoungArts
The headquarters of the YoungArts Foundation is an incredible and historic piece of Florida architecture built by the Bacardi empire for its Miami headquarters in 1963. It includes an eight-story, mosaic-emblazoned tower and a shorter, square counterpart that looks like it landed there from outer space. Both sit on a raised plaza overlooking Biscayne Boulevard nearly equidistant from Midtown, Downtown, and South Beach.
SBTRKT is an anonymous producer and live instrumentator whose electronic aural language plays off the indigenous iconography he shrouds his persona in. And ASAP Ferg is a Harlem rapper whose catchy Trap Lord music belies an intelligent and artistic grind for the sake of bouncing heads and dollar bills.
Dec. 5, 7 p.m., National YoungArts Campus, 2100 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. $25-$37. more info

Swizz Beats and Nabiha at SCOPE
No less an art-and-music avatar than Kanye West once publicly proclaimed via Twitter that "Swizz Beats is the best hip hop producer of all time." That’s a matter of opinion, but one thing is certain, Swizz has sold millions of records and many love his work. He also knows his way around two turntables like a surgeon knows a scalpel and he will close this party out right with a DJ set of his favorite selections. Headlining the evening’s entertainment is Nabiha, who hails from Copenhagen by way of West Africa. She’s a European chart-topping songstress who tours the world with an artful blend of urban pop. Together they perform SCOPE Art Fair’s first edition on Miami Beach, a VH1-sponsored event.
Dec. 5, SCOPE Art Fair, 910 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach. $20-$30. scope-art.com

Questlove with Matthew Law and Reid Waters at Foxhole Bar 
You can catch Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson for free any night of the week -- on your television, playing with The Roots on "The Tonight Show." But it’s not every day you can groove to a live DJ set from the late-night icon for the beautiful price of nada. And certainly not in one of the finest watering holes our fair city has to offer during one of the busiest and most synaptically satisfying weeks of the year. Quest has spent his entire life categorically memorizing each and every crucial record he could get his hands on. And his party music selections are an inspired journey through the mind of a musical aficionado heralded the world over for his ability to set the night off right.
Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Foxhole Bar, 1218 14th Ct., Miami Beach. Free.foxholebar.com

Fool’s Gold Day Off (A-Trak,Danny Brown, DJ Mustard, Milo & Otis, Trippy Turtle, Giraffage, Nick Catchdubs, Flat White, Shash’U, The Outfit, TX) at LMNT 
Media pundits and unsuccessful entrepreneurs can talk all they want about the death of the music business, but record labels like Fool’s Gold prove that it’s alive and well. Thriving on the strength of its own viral momentum, this NYC-based collective of globetrotting DJs, producers, and singer-songwriters are experts at the craft of rocking the party and the pop-music charts. Celebrating seven years of massive artistic influence on global music culture, they may encourage you to take a day off, but they’ll be working the stage like the ghost of James Brown.
Dec. 7, 2 p.m., LMNT, 59 NW 36th St., Miami. $20-$100. ticketfly.com

Rob Goyanes contributed to this listing.

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