RA: Miami

Miami 2011: Survival of the fittest

WMC, Ultra, Miami Music Week, whatever: It's all just "doing Miami," as RA's Will Lynch found out over the course of 120 hours in Florida late last month.

Dance music in Miami usually conjures up two big names: Ultra Music Festival and the Winter Music Conference. But there's a third event that draws tens of thousands of people to the city every year––a constellation of parties with no official backbone, and therefore no real title (most people just say "Miami," as in "how many years have you done Miami?"). For a long time it was considered an unofficial part of WMC, something that changed with this year's split. But truth be told, the connection had long been a tenuous one: over the years, the parties took on a life of their own, forming a kind of shadow conference that eclipsed WMC itself. (One person I spoke with said he'd done Miami every year since 2002, and only set foot in the actual conference once, and then just because he figured he might as well.) RA's William Rauscher likened "Miami" to a pulsating, constantly evolving amoeba. The fact that this year's amoeba remained so healthy despite the Ultra/WMC split shows what an independent organism it really is.


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