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History of Music in Miami: From Overtown to Ultra

From Bahamian roots and Overtown’s Harlem of the South to Criteria Studios, TK disco, Miami bass, Latin pop and Ultra: how Miami made its music.

Miami is a young city with a big back catalog. It was incorporated in 1896. In the 130 years since, it has given the world a Sam Cooke live album that Rolling Stone ranks among the greatest ever made, the guitar epic “Layla,” a No. 1 disco hit whose backing track was cut as a demo in about 45 minutes, the first recording ever ruled legally obscene, the longest conga line on record and a dance festival that takes over downtown every March.

The thread running through all of it is arrival. Bahamian laborers, Black stars who could headline the beach hotels but not sleep in them, rock bands chasing winter sun, Cuban exiles, Haitian families, DJs escaping the cold. Each wave brought a sound, and Miami mixed them together.

Miami music history at a glance

  • 1896 — Miami is incorporated. Black men, some of them Bahamian, are among its founding voters.
  • 1913 — Geder Walker opens the Lyric Theater in Colored Town, the neighborhood later called Overtown.
  • 1926 — The Olympia Theater opens downtown. Elvis Presley plays it in August 1956.
  • 1951 — Josephine Baker plays Copa City on Miami Beach for an integrated audience.
  • 1958 — Mack Emerman opens Criteria Recording Studios in North Miami.
  • 1963 — Sam Cooke records live at Overtown’s Harlem Square Club.
  • 1964 — The Beatles broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show from the Deauville. Cassius Clay celebrates his heavyweight title at the Hampton House. Jackie Gleason moves his TV show to Miami Beach.
  • 1965 — James Brown records “I Got You (I Feel Good)” at Criteria. Demolition for I-95 begins in Overtown.
  • 1970 — Derek and the Dominos record Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs at Criteria.
  • 1974 — George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby,” a TK Records single, goes to No. 1.
  • 1977–1978 — The Goombay Festival begins in Coconut Grove, and the Calle Ocho festival begins in Little Havana.
  • 1985 — Miami Sound Machine releases “Conga.” The Winter Music Conference is founded.
  • 1988 — 119,986 people form the world’s longest conga line at Calle Ocho.
  • 1990 — A federal judge rules 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be obscene. A jury acquits the group that October.
  • 1999 — Ultra Music Festival debuts on Miami Beach.
  • 2003 — The Latin Grammys are held in Miami, the first time outside Los Angeles.
  • 2011 — The Frank Gehry-designed New World Center opens.
  • 2017 — Snarky Puppy’s Michael League and Paul Lehr found the GroundUP Music Festival on Miami Beach.
  • 2025 — UNESCO adds Haitian konpa to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

Where did Miami’s music begin? The Bahamian and Caribbean roots

Before Miami was a city, it was a Caribbean crossroads. In the late 1800s, Black Bahamians crossed the Gulf Stream for maritime jobs and farm work, and later to build the new city itself.

When Miami incorporated on July 28, 1896, Black men made up more than a third of the voters the State of Florida required to create a city, according to the Black Archives. Some of them were Bahamian. By 1920, Bahamians were just over half of Miami’s Black residents.

They brought island music with them. WLRN’s 2013 report on early Overtown recalls Bahamian musicians marching down Fifth Place on Friday nights, playing calypso.

That heritage is still loud in Coconut Grove. The Goombay Festival, founded in 1977, fills Grand Avenue with Junkanoo groups and Bahamian singers, and with the Bahamian government’s support the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band became one of its best-loved acts. The Junkanoo parade that opens it is called a “rush.” The big street festival stopped after 2014, came back in 2022 and was on Grand Avenue again by 2023.

The Bahamian thread runs through later chapters, too. KC and the Sunshine Band started out as KC & the Sunshine Junkanoo Band, because Harry Wayne Casey brought a local Junkanoo band into the studio for his first single. And Miami bass pioneer Luther Campbell grew up with a Jamaican father and a mother of Bahamian roots, and has said the bass in his music came from the reggae records he knew.

Why was Overtown called the “Harlem of the South”?

Overtown began as “Colored Town,” a district set apart by custom and by law. Its main artery, Northwest Second Avenue, became known as “Little Broadway,” and the neighborhood as a whole earned the name “Harlem of the South” for its booming businesses and its nightlife.

The anchor was the Lyric Theater. Geder Walker, a Black businessman from Georgia, built it in 1913 and ran it himself. The 400-seat house showed movies and vaudeville for almost fifty years, and hosted performers and speakers including Ethel Waters, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1915 the Miami Metropolis called it possibly the most beautiful and costly Black-owned playhouse in the South.

By the 1950s, Overtown was a nightlife center that drew Black, Latino and white Miamians alike. Promoter Clyde Killens, known as “Miami’s Mr. Entertainment,” ran the Knight Beat club inside the Sir John Hotel, which opened in 1951 as the Lord Calvert. His circuit also took in the Harlem Square Club, the Island Club and the Fiesta Club at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel. The names on those bills included Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Jackie Wilson.

The segregation circuit: play the Beach, sleep in Overtown

Black stars such as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Duke Ellington headlined white hotels on Miami Beach, but they were not allowed to spend the night there. After the show, they crossed the bay to Overtown’s hotels and clubs, often with their white fans following. The community history site Going Overtown says they frequently saved their funkiest sets for those late-night gigs.

Sam Cooke’s Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 captures exactly that energy. He recorded it in Overtown on January 12, 1963, with saxophonist King Curtis in the band. His label, RCA, thought the show was too raw for his polished pop image and shelved it. It finally came out in 1985. Rolling Stone placed it at No. 240 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.

Some stars pushed back. When Copa City on Miami Beach invited Josephine Baker to perform, she refused to play a venue that kept Black patrons out. The club signed an agreement to admit everyone, and her show opened in January 1951. The City of Miami Beach credits her as the first performer to play to an integrated audience there.

The Hampton House and “One Night in Miami”

In the Brownsville neighborhood, the Hampton House Motel became the other great gathering place of Black Miami. It opened in the mid-1950s as the Booker Terrace Motel and took the Hampton House name in 1961. Guests included Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. The Historic Hampton House, as the restored motel is now known, says King delivered an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech there.

On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay took the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston at the Miami Beach Convention Hall, then went back to the Hampton House to celebrate. Sam Cooke, football star Jim Brown and Malcolm X were invited. That night inspired the 2020 film One Night in Miami. The motel closed in 1976, was saved by preservationists led by Enid Pinkney, reopened for events in 2017 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 7, 2022.

What happened to Overtown?

In the mid-1960s, urban renewal and two expressways tore the neighborhood apart. Demolition for Interstate 95 began in 1965, and the interchange connecting I-95, I-395 and State Road 836 was built across the heart of Black Miami. Thousands of residents were forced out, many to Liberty City, Brownsville, Allapattah and other areas. A district that once had more than 300 local businesses was left with a fraction of them.

The Lyric survived. The Black Archives bought it in 1988 and reopened it in 2000 after a long restoration.

Miami Beach’s nightclub era: from the Latin Quarter to Jackie Gleason

Across the bay, Miami Beach built a glamorous circuit for winter tourists. Lou Walters, the father of journalist Barbara Walters, took over the Palm Island Club from Earl Carroll and relaunched it as a Miami Beach edition of his Latin Quarter nightclub.

The Fontainebleau opened in 1954, designed by Morris Lapidus. Its La Ronde room booked stars such as Judy Garland. On March 26, 1960, Frank Sinatra taped his Timex TV special there to welcome Elvis Presley home from the Army. Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford joined them. Elvis earned $125,000, he and Sinatra swapped “Witchcraft” and “Love Me Tender” in a duet, and the special drew a 41.5 TV rating when it aired on May 12, 1960.

On February 16, 1964, the Beatles made their second live U.S. TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast from the Deauville Hotel on Miami Beach to about 70 million viewers.

Later that year, Jackie Gleason moved his variety show from New York to Miami Beach, arriving by train with his cast, band and dancers. He taped it at the Miami Beach Auditorium until 1970. The building is now The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater. Celia Cruz sang at the Gleason in 1996.

Downtown, the Olympia Theater opened in 1926 as a silent movie palace. Elvis played it in August 1956, and Etta James and B.B. King also appeared there in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the building awaits restoration.

How did Criteria Studios make rock history in North Miami?

Mack Emerman, a musician, opened Criteria Recording Studios in North Miami in 1958. Criteria says its first gold record came from James Brown, who recorded “I Got You (I Feel Good)” there in 1965. It became his highest-charting Hot 100 single.

Criteria’s legend grew with producer Tom Dowd. In late August 1970, Eric Clapton’s new band, Derek and the Dominos, arrived. On August 26 they went to a Miami Beach concert by the Allman Brothers Band, whom Dowd was also recording. After the show, both bands went back to Criteria and jammed for hours. Duane Allman ended up playing on most of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, recorded at Criteria starting August 28, 1970.

Clapton came back in 1974 for 461 Ocean Boulevard, named for the Golden Beach house where he lived during the sessions. It gave him “I Shot the Sheriff.”

Then came the Bee Gees. Working with producer Arif Mardin at Criteria in early 1975, with some sessions in New York, they made Main Course and “Jive Talkin’,” and their sound turned toward R&B. Criteria was one of the studios where they worked on the Saturday Night Fever songs, including “Stayin’ Alive.” The Eagles split Hotel California between Criteria and Los Angeles in 1976. Fleetwood Mac cut part of Rumours there too.

After years as the Hit Factory Criteria, it has been Criteria Studios again since 2017.

TK Records and the 1970s “Miami sound”

While rock stars flew in, a Miami label was building its own sound in a Hialeah warehouse. Henry Stone came to Miami in the late 1940s and recorded a young Ray Charles. With Steve Alaimo he ran TK Records, named for Terry Kane, the engineer who built its studio. Label historians call TK’s output “the Miami Sound,” and the label was there at the birth of disco.

Betty Wright, born in Miami, recorded “Clean Up Woman” at 17 for Stone’s Alston label. The 1971 single reached No. 6 on the pop chart and No. 2 on the R&B chart. She later won a Grammy for Best R&B Song for “Where Is the Love,” written with Harry Wayne Casey, Richard Finch and Willie Clarke.

Timmy Thomas made “Why Can’t We Live Together” as a one-man band: a Lowrey organ, an early rhythm machine and his voice. Released in 1972 on Stone’s Glades label, it topped the R&B chart and reached No. 3 on the Hot 100. Drake sampled it for “Hotline Bling” in 2015.

Casey was a record-store employee and part-timer at TK. Finch engineered records there. In 1973 they recorded a backing track as a demo in about 45 minutes. With George McCrae singing on top, “Rock Your Baby” went to No. 1 in the U.S. and the U.K. in 1974. It is often cited as one of the earliest disco hits. As KC and the Sunshine Band, Casey and Finch then scored five Hot 100 No. 1s, including “Get Down Tonight,” “That’s the Way (I Like It)” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty.”

TK went bankrupt in 1981, but a DJ who used to hang around its studio, Bill Kelly, carried its dance-floor energy into the next era.

How did Cuban exiles change Miami’s music?

Since Fidel Castro took power in 1959, more than a million Cubans have come to the United States, most of them settling in Miami. They came in waves, including the “Freedom Flights” era, which brought about a quarter of a million people by 1974, and the Mariel boatlift, which brought about 125,000 in 1980. In the 1960s, the U.S. government processed refugees at downtown’s Freedom Tower, now a National Historic Landmark.

The exiles rebuilt Cuban culture along Southwest Eighth Street, which became Calle Ocho, the main street of Little Havana. In 1978, Cuban exiles started the Calle Ocho festival, now run by the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana. In 1988 it set a Guinness World Record, with 119,986 people in a single conga line.

Celia Cruz, the salsa legend, left Cuba in 1960 and never returned, and her music was banned there after she left. Miami claimed her. A street carries her name, and after she died in July 2003, her body was brought to the Freedom Tower for a public viewing while thousands of mourners lined the streets.

Willy Chirino was 14 when he came to the U.S. without his parents in 1961, through Operation Pedro Pan. He released his first album in Miami in 1974 and, in the Museum of Miami’s words, “was instrumental in the development of the 1970s Miami Sound.” He won a Grammy in 2006 for Son del Alma, and he is still on stage: he and his wife, Lissette, have a holiday show at the Fillmore Miami Beach on December 5, 2026.

Gloria Estefan joined Emilio Estefan’s band, the Miami Latin Boys, in 1975, and the group became Miami Sound Machine. “Conga” (1985) reached the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10 and made the band international stars. In 2019 the Estefans received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first time it went to a married couple or to songwriters of Hispanic descent.

Why is Miami the capital of the Latin music business?

In the 1990s, Miami became the capital of the Latin music business. In 1997, Florida Trend reported that all six major record labels ran their Latin music divisions from the city. The Latin Recording Academy, founded in 1997, has its headquarters here.

The city’s politics shaped that story too. In 2001, the Latin Grammys were moved out of Miami after organizers cited safety concerns over planned protests by exile groups objecting to performers from Cuba. The show moved to Los Angeles, still set for September 11, 2001, and was canceled after that morning’s attacks. On September 3, 2003, the Latin Grammys finally came to Miami, the first time the telecast was held outside Los Angeles.

The business keeps growing. Billboard Latin Music Week was held in Miami Beach in October 2025, and companies such as Sony Music Latin and Concord have added studios and offices in the area.

What is Miami bass? Luther Campbell, 2 Live Crew and the 1990 obscenity case

Miami bass is the city’s own hip-hop: booming, 808-driven party music that grew out of Liberty City’s DJ crews and teen dances in the 1980s.

Luther Campbell grew up there and ran parties with the Ghetto Style DJs crew, who talked over records to get the crowd going, much like Jamaican sound systems. 2 Live Crew had formed in California before relocating to Miami, and Campbell calls their DJ and producer, Mr. Mixx, the creator of bass. In 1986 Campbell started Luke Skyywalker Records to release their single “Throw the D,” and opened the Pac Jam Teen Disco at 54th Street and 12th Avenue, where teenagers invented dances that turned into songs.

Then came the fight. In June 1990, U.S. District Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled the 1989 album As Nasty as They Wanna Be obscene in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties. It was the first sound recording ever declared obscene. Days later, on June 10, members of 2 Live Crew were arrested after performing at Club Futura in Hollywood, Florida. On October 20, 1990, a Fort Lauderdale jury acquitted Campbell, Mark Ross and Chris Wongwon after about two hours of deliberation.

In May 1992, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the obscenity ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro’s appeal. In 1994, 2 Live Crew won again at the Supreme Court: in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, a unanimous Court held that their parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” could be fair use.

Miami hip-hop: Trick Daddy, Trina, Rick Ross, Pitbull and DJ Khaled

Campbell’s example inspired the next generation. Ted Lucas founded Slip-N-Slide Records in 1994 after learning that Campbell owned his own label. His first artist was Trick Daddy, who grew up in Liberty City, and Trick Daddy introduced him to Trina. Their 2001 posse cut “Take It to da House” samples KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes,” a neat loop from TK disco to Miami rap.

Rick Ross, raised in Carol City, broke through with “Hustlin’” in 2006. His debut album, Port of Miami, entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1, and in 2008 he founded Maybach Music Group.

Pitbull, the son of Cuban immigrants, grew up in Miami loving Miami bass and signed to Luke Records. He released M.I.A.M.I. in 2004 and went from “Mr. 305” to “Mr. Worldwide.” “Give Me Everything” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July 2011.

DJ Khaled built his name on Mixx 96, a Caribbean pirate station broadcasting from Biscayne Boulevard. In 1998 Campbell brought him onto The Luke Show on 99 Jamz, and when that show ended in 2003 the station gave Khaled his own slot. In 2017, “I’m the One” debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100, his first chart-topper.

How did Miami become a capital of electronic dance music?

The line from disco to EDM runs through Bill Kelly, the DJ who used to hang around TK. In 1985 he and Louis Possenti gathered about 80 dance-music insiders at a Fort Lauderdale hotel. That meeting became the Winter Music Conference, which soon moved to Miami and gave DJs and label people a reason to trade winter for South Florida every March.

In March 1999, Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes staged a one-day beach party in South Beach alongside the conference and called it Ultra Music Festival. Rabbit in the Moon headlined, with Josh Wink, Armand van Helden and LTJ Bukem on the bill. By its third year, Ultra had outgrown the beach and moved downtown.

In 2011 the conference and the festival split their dates, and Ultra branded the week of parties around it “Miami Music Week.” The name stuck. In 2018, Ultra’s organizers bought the Winter Music Conference. Ultra returned to Bayfront Park on March 27 to 29, 2026, and clubs like Club Space keep the dance floor busy the rest of the year.

What does Miami’s music scene sound like today?

Little Haiti is home to the city’s Haitian music. Since 2016, Sounds of Little Haiti has filled the Little Haiti Cultural Complex on the third Friday of every month. Its September 18, 2026 edition featured the konpa band Djakout #1. Konpa, Haiti’s signature dance music, was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in December 2025. Rara, the Haitian street-festival music of bamboo trumpets, tin horns and drums, has been kept alive in Little Haiti’s street parties and in workshops at the cultural complex. Nearby, Churchill’s Pub, founded in 1979 and nicknamed the CBGB of Miami, reopened in September 2025 after five dark years.

Wynwood is known for the Wynwood Walls, an outdoor street-art museum that opened in 2009. The III Points festival is on the calendar at Mana Wynwood for October 16 and 17, 2026.

Jazz and blues rooms keep the Overtown spirit going. Lagniappe, a wine bar on NE 2nd Avenue, books live music every night. Ball & Chain, which hosted Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Chet Baker in the late 1950s, was revived in 2014 and has live music daily. Café La Trova in Little Havana features trova musicians.

The GroundUP Music Festival was founded in 2017 by Snarky Puppy bandleader Michael League and Miami arts veteran Paul Lehr, as part of the GroundUP Music organization. It runs at the Miami Beach Bandshell in North Beach with about 1,500 people a day and no overlapping sets. Its 10th-anniversary festival ran March 13 to 15, 2026.

Art Basel Miami Beach debuted in December 2002 with 160 exhibitors and 30,000 visitors. The fair now anchors Miami Art Week, when exhibitions and events spread into neighborhoods such as Wynwood and Allapattah.

The New World Symphony, an orchestral academy for young musicians, was co-founded in 1987 by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with Ted and Lin Arison. In January 2011 it moved into the New World Center, designed by Frank Gehry around a 756-seat hall. Its free WALLCAST concerts project performances onto a 7,000-square-foot outdoor wall, and the 2026–27 series opens on October 10, 2026 with Beethoven’s Ninth.

Where can you hear live music in Miami right now?

Each was open, with live music on its calendar or advertised, when we checked in late September 2026. Confirm before you go.

  • Ball & Chain, Little Havana (1513 SW 8th Street): live Latin music and salsa, with events on the calendar most days.
  • Café La Trova, Little Havana: Cuban cocktails and live trova musicians.
  • Lagniappe, 3425 NE 2nd Avenue: live music every night from 9 p.m. to midnight, often jazz and blues.
  • Little Haiti Cultural Complex: Sounds of Little Haiti, third Friday of each month.
  • Churchill’s Pub, Little Haiti (5501 NE 2nd Avenue): punk, metal and local bands.
  • New World Center, Miami Beach: free WALLCAST concerts in the park, starting October 10, 2026.
  • Adrienne Arsht Center, downtown: a full 2026–27 season, including free and pay-what-you-can events.
  • The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater: touring concerts through the fall and winter.
  • Miami Beach Bandshell, North Beach: run by the Rhythm Foundation, with concerts through October and the GroundUP festival each year.
  • Club Space: dance music, with a full October calendar.

The tradition continues in Miami’s private rooms

Look back over this history and a pattern appears. Much of Miami’s best music happened in rooms that never made the headlines: the late set after the Beach show, the hotel ballroom, the backyard party, the family wedding. Timmy Thomas proved in 1972 that one musician with an organ and a rhythm machine could fill a record. Today’s one-man bands do something similar live, building a full band’s sound loop by loop.

That work is carried on by the working musicians who play Miami’s private events and weddings. One of them is William “Willy B” Hurwitz, who grew up in Miami and taught himself harmonica as a teenager, later adding guitar and piano. He hosted a show on WVUM 90.5, the University of Miami’s student station. Today he performs as a one-man band, looping live drums, bass, keys, guitar, harmonica and vocals, and he writes songs on the spot about his hosts. He sang “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch at a Miami Marlins game on September 27, 2026.

Miami’s music has always been made by people who showed up, played the room and made it their own. If you want that at your own celebration, you can book live music here.

Frequently asked questions about Miami music history

Why was Overtown called the “Harlem of the South”?

Overtown, first called Colored Town, earned the name for its booming businesses and its nightlife in segregated Miami, and Northwest Second Avenue was known as “Little Broadway.” Black stars who headlined white Miami Beach hotels could not stay there, so they stayed in Overtown and often played late shows at clubs like the Knight Beat and the Harlem Square Club.

What is the “Miami sound”?

The phrase has two meanings. Label historians use “the Miami Sound” for the 1970s disco and R&B of Henry Stone’s TK Records, home to KC and the Sunshine Band, George McCrae and Betty Wright. It is also used for the Cuban-American fusion of the same era that Willy Chirino helped develop, and it echoes in the name of Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s Miami Sound Machine.

What famous albums were recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami?

Criteria, founded in North Miami in 1958, is where James Brown recorded “I Got You (I Feel Good),” Derek and the Dominos made Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Eric Clapton made 461 Ocean Boulevard and the Bee Gees made Main Course. Parts of Hotel California, Rumours and the Saturday Night Fever songs were recorded there too.

What is Miami bass?

Miami bass is a style of hip-hop that grew out of Liberty City parties in the 1980s, built on booming 808 drum machines and DJs talking over the records. Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew made it famous, and their 1989 album As Nasty as They Wanna Be became the first recording ruled legally obscene, a ruling an appeals court reversed in 1992.

When did Ultra Music Festival and Miami Music Week start?

Ultra began in March 1999 as a one-day beach party in South Beach, timed to the Winter Music Conference, which DJs Bill Kelly and Louis Possenti founded in 1985. The name “Miami Music Week” took hold in 2011, when Ultra branded the week of parties around the festival.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against the sources below in September 2026.

Bahamian and Caribbean roots

Overtown, the Hampton House and I-95

Miami Beach nightclubs and TV

Criteria Studios

TK Records

Cuban and Latin Miami

Miami bass

Hip-hop

Electronic music

Today’s scene

Where to hear live music now (checked September 2026)

The tradition continues

Bring Miami’s music home

Willy B plays private events, weddings and parties across Miami, and teaches guitar, piano, voice and harmonica.

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