By Laura Quinlan, Rhythm Foundation

Last Thursday, October 24th, Arcade Fire – one of the most popular rock groups in the world today – played a secret show at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.  For real!  Of course it wasn’t so secret because thousands of people turned out, even though they called themselves “The Reflektors.”   Now that the crazy week is done, we want to share how exactly this happened.

Photo by Luis Olazabal

In mid-September, we got an email:  “My name is Edwidge Danticat and I am an author and resident of Little Haiti. Grammy Award winners and friends of Haiti ARCADE FIRE are in town October 24th and would love to play at Big Night In Little Haiti.”   Danticat, the Macarthur Genius Award-winning author who we read in Book Club, emailing to ask if Arcade Fire could play at Big Night?!  She and her family had enjoyed Big Nights many times, but this was still a surprise.

Rara Lakay bandleader Emanuel (second from right) has switched his Rara Lakay shirt for Win Butler’s Reflektor shirt

Arcade Fire has a long-time commitment to Haiti.  Regine Chassagne is of Haitian descent, she and Win Butler have spent time in Haitian, jamming with bands like Ricard Morse’s RAM, letting loose at Jacmel’s kanaval.  They also work closely with a charity, PartnersInHealth.org and other Haitian relief efforts.  They wanted to play a show in Little Haiti, reaching out to the Haitian-American community.

The Little Haiti Cultural Center is a gem.  The facility is so well designed, the staff is fantastic.  We had to work really fast to squeeze a show of this magnitude into the plaza. We also the great cooperation of the City of Miami Police Department’s North Station, who helped move through some of the City paperwork and set up the logistics.

Rara Lakay getting the crowd going before Arcade Fire took the stage

The band wanted the show to feel like Little Haiti.  Tickets not sold online to fans were sold at local Haitian record shops (and of course Sweat Records),  Inez from Kazoots coordinated the face painters (we had been inspired by the beautiful face painting of Kazak, her father Jan Sebon’s band), Leela’s Restaurant handled the food vending and the Haitian Culinary Alliance the catering. We also shared tickets to some of the artists who make Big Night in Little Haiti so special each month.  And of course the night opened with Rara Lakay.  They are the neighborhood band – most months they close out Big Night with a hypnotic horn-and-percussion drenched parade deep into Little Haiti.   They are really a treasure.  Win traded shirts with the bandleader – they loved the group.

We hope some of the Arcade Fire fans who came out for the show return for our ‘regular’ Big Nights in Little Haiti.  The November 15 show is going to be really special – it will feature the first South Florida concert by legendary roots group R.A.M. in many years.