From Buju Banton to Vybz Kartel, Caribbean artists have been reaching new heights in the live music entertainment sector this year, with several of the biggest names across reggae, dancehall, soca and konpa graduating to arena-headlining status. With his forthcoming ninth edition of BAYO Festival on Saturday (June 28), Latin Grammy-nominated DJ and producer Michaël Brun is looking to join that esteemed group.
Born out of a free, impromptu street party in his home country of Haiti, BAYO is an annual block party that has steadily grown in popularity and turnout each year. Translated to English, “bayo” means “to give,” a worthy title for an event that trades on gifting diasporic communities a night of generation-bridging musical performances and beloved local vendors. Last year, Brun’s festival took over Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with a lineup that included J Balvin, Oxlade and J. Perry. One key element of BAYO is that the lineup is kept a closely guarded secret until the show begins; revelers may not know who will be soundtracking their night ahead of time, but Brun has garnered enough trust from them to properly serve as master of ceremonies. This weekend, BAYO will yet again graduate to an even larger venue: Barclays Center.
“Around 2019, we started almost doubling [attendance] every single year, that’s when the idea to move to arenas came up,” he tells Billboard over a chai latte in Downtown Brooklyn, less than two weeks before the show. “That year, we hosted BAYO for about 1,800 people at Brooklyn Steel, so we felt that we could scale it up in the right way. [Grammy-winning R&B star Maxwell also made a surprise appearance that year.] We stopped for two years [during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic], but I kept doing it online, which was really helpful. When you start something for 20-30 people and see it grow into the biggest stages in the U.S., it’s insane, incredible and a little bit scary.”
Though this year marks his ninth time mounting BAYO, it’s also Brun’s tenth year personally throwing events. From debuting as a self-taught electronic DJ at house parties in his teenage years to playing major festivals like Coachella and Tomorrowland, Brun has used his music skills to consciously and intentionally build communities around the globe. “All the EDM stuff taught me how to do Caribbean-specific events,” he says. “I’m really grateful for that trajectory because even though I didn’t know where I was going at the time, in retrospect, it taught me a lot.”
This year’s BAYO Fest also serves as a tribute to Brun’s late mother, Sharon Andrea Lee-Brun, who passed late last year after a battle with cancer. “This was one of the last things we spoke about before she passed,” he reflects. “There’s a moment for her in the show that’s gonna be really, really special.”
BAYO’s Barclays moment also comes amid an upswing in Caribbean touring acts at the arena level. Dancehall king Vybz Kartel sold out two back-to-back nights at Barclays in April, and Long Island’s UBS Arena has hosted five sold-out, $1 million-grossing shows across four Caribbean genres in under a year. As UBS has emerged as a formidable competitor to iconic NYC arenas like Barclays and Madison Square Garden, Brun couldn’t resist the gravity of finally bringing BAYO to the very venue he walks by every day in his second hometown of Brooklyn. Nonetheless, mounting a show in a roofed arena is markedly different from a summertime showcase in a public park. With a new venue comes a new vision for the festival, and Brun has taken careful consideration to strike a balance between honoring the essence of BAYO while translating the show to an arena stage.
“What’s really cool about the arena — and maybe complex for some artists — is that it’s a blank canvas,” he explains. “Inherently, when you [throw] a block party, there’s an element of a lot of things happening at once. In the arena, it’s all about crafting a spectacle. In smaller scale shows, there’s less distance between the stage and the audience, so we’re thinking about how to ensure that every moment of the show makes you feel as if you were in the first few rows.”
With a concert capacity of 19,000, this year’s BAYO lineup will have access to a much larger and more intricate venue than past iterations of the festival. While he’s intent on keeping the stage design as much as a secret as the lineup, Brun does tease that he’s re-teamed with past BAYO collaborator and Haitian artist Yaël Talleyrand and that the stage will be anchored by a theme of transportation. “Transportation is important,” he muses. “How does that build and inform identity?”
Brun’s alluding to immigration, a particularly prickly topic in a city like New York. Caribbean immigrants are a vital part of what makes NYC such a culturally rich city, and increased ICE presence in neighborhoods densely populated by Caribbean people (like Flatbush or Crown Heights) has only made their relationship with their city more contentious. What’s more? Brun is mounting BAYO the very month President Trump’s travel ban, which includes Haiti, goes into effect.
It’s one thing to bring a Caribbean festival to an arena in less than ten years, but it’s an entirely different thing to do during one of the most precarious political moments of the decade so far. How do you coordinate security? What does that look like when ICE seems to be arresting, detaining and deporting before asking questions? Is it even ethical to knowingly bring these groups into the same space?
“I’m creating safe spaces that show the beauty of life,” Brun says, choosing his words carefully. “I think the most powerful way to share your experience and perspective is through something like a concert, because it’s very subtle. It creates a curiosity that’s genuine, and an attraction to something that’s different. On the one hand, you’re creating a safe place for the people of the culture, but you’re also opening up a route for adversarial people, who might be operating from a place of fear. Hopefully, [those adversarial people] come to the show and their minds will be changed. That’s my view. I want to be a positive ambassador for the things that I love; in the process of that, you create bridges.”
The Billboard-charting artist also stressed that BAYO has “the support of local government and parts of NYPD,” which he hopes will “create a safe environment where people feel comfortable going out.”
Rumors continue to swirl about this year’s performers — Brun confirms “there will be some shaking,” but whether that’s “to the max” is yet to be determined — but the ever-evolving multihyphenate is keeping his DJ skills at the center of his growing BAYO empire.
Over the last sip of his latte, Brun proclaims: “When I’m bringing people out at BAYO, I see it as me DJing people instead of songs.”
