Lately, Frank Falestra has been making more noise than usual, something long overdue and welcomed by many.

He has been defying the expected standards of what music is for some 30 years now, with Miami’s iconic Churchill’s Pub as his inner sanctum since 1980. And as a 2012 Knight Arts Challenge winner, Falestra is now tuning more people in.

One of the staples of Miami’s underground music scene, Falestra, in his mid 50s, is a guardian of sorts who keeps championing the raw power of unfettered sounds and rhythms even when ritzy dance clubs, gigantic electronica fests, hip hop weekends, and bland commercial radio have obliterated just about everything else in their path.

His goal in applying for the Knight Arts Challenge was “to encourage South Florida musicians to produce innovative compositions by giving them the opportunity to perform and network with modern composers at an experimental music event.”

And the event that allows for this is the International Noise Conference (INC), which begins tonight and runs through Saturday in Miami. Some 140 performers are expected, with 15 minutes tops as their time limit.

Falestra, known as “Rat Bastard,” founded the gathering a decade ago, creating opportunities for like-minded artists from established performers to drifters, to enjoy music, mingle and, yes, make noise. Plus, he curates it all, because one person’s ruckus may be another fan’s favorite.

The man whose Scraping Teeth group was labeled “the worst band in America” by Spin magazine (much to Falestra’s pride), and who fronts the Laundry Room Squelchers band, chatted with the Knight Arts Blog about his project just as the 2014 Challenge opens for applications.  The conference isn’t the type of work that foundations typically fund. Why did you decide to apply for the Knight Arts Challenge?

When they first started [the Knight Arts Challenge], I submitted the idea of the International Noise Conference, the festival. Which is not just that, but a whole thing around it. There’s touring and studio stuff, and there’s a lot of online videos with the local bands, that people anywhere can watch. We put it all under the International Noise Conference because that is the biggest festival that we do in public the whole year. Over the years, the International Noise Conference started getting more popular with the locals. Originally, it was mostly all out-of-towners coming down and doing the festival, very few locals were showing up. This is not normally what would be given a grant, because it’s just not considered conventional, you know. We are looking at things differently these days, because a lot of the conventional stuff has already been taken care of and now we are really after the new ideas. That’s when I put in [the proposal for the Knight Arts Challenge] and they looked at it, started researching everything I’ve done and realized this is a lot more than a bunch of noise at little Churchill’s.

How has the grant helped?

It has raised the level of the festival by making it more public, getting more information about it out there. Now more local people say “Maybe we should look at this.” It’s more serious. It also helps us put money into the event.

From the moment you started the International Noise Conference to winning this grant, there has been an obvious shift in perception. There’s noise being made about the Noise Festival. What has been the trajectory then?

Before we did the International Noise Conference at Churchill’s we used to do [another festival] which we had like once a year. Five or six out-of-towners or groups that would actually make it down to Miami for one week and we would have this little party, this one-nighter at Churchill’s and we would play other clubs around South Florida. The idea was people doing noise and doing singing/songwriting, and mixing them up, one noise band, one songwriter, and it was this extremely shocking combination. And it was really good. With the first International Noise Conference, we made a rule that we were never going to involve any money. We were not going to pay any artists or collect any money. Just free shows for everyone and no money in the festival itself. Everything that we needed to run the festival, we borrowed or took from our pockets. And that got people interested. Then we started doing tours, traveling around the country. Then I did Europe and Asia, and it did really well.

I have to ask you… where does your unusual nickname come from?

A long time ago, in the 80s, I was recording a band called The Drills, like The Ramones, I grew up in the lower east side of New York, born and raised in that area. Landline rings; it was my mother looking for me on the phone. One of the guys picked up and she said, “Would you put that rat bastard on the phone?” They couldn’t believe my mother called me that. They put it on the record as the producer. She started it.  So I thought, “That’s a good name, I’ll keep that.”

Juan Carlos Pérez-Duthie is a Miami-based freelance writer

Applications for the Knight Arts Challenge are being accepted through Feb. 24. Apply now.