2018 saw the beginning of WLRN’s Live from the 305 series, a bi-monthly conversation with the artists shaping South Florida’s music scene. We also release music videos of the artists performing in the WLRN studios.
From folk to rap, the musicians spanned genres and styles. Here's a list of some of our favorites:
Actress and singer Shira Lee plays a mix of folk, blues and jazz at venues across South Florida. She also starred in the web-series Grown about Haitian Americans coming of age in Miami. And she's the creator behind the Babawagon, a mobile performance stage that’s hosted actors, dancers and musicians at pop-up events around Miami.
Twenty-two-year-old Broward County rapper Sam Stan defines his approach to hip-hop as “happy rap.” Stan's music focuses on the challenges he’s faced in his life while refraining from using vulgar language. “I just want to be a glass of lemonade on a hot day,” he said in our interview in October. Stan’s music has reached millions of plays on Spotify and the web is his target audience for his music; he rarely plays local shows.
We recently had the R&B Miami-based group Soulpax. Guitarist Julian Harris and vocalist Julia Camayd founded the group after attending a master class at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. They honed their skills at Berklee College of Music in Boston but returned to the Magic City to build upon the scene here. Soulpax has a number of local shows coming up in January, including at the Titanic Brewery in Coral Gables January 12 and at Tea and Poets January 19.
Coming up in January, we will have performances from the local duo Dracula and Miami’s long-running Latin band Palo!, whose theme music you hear on our daily show Sundial. Check out the Spotify playlist of our favorite performances from our Live from the 305 artists.