In the Little River Cultural Garden, Akia Dorsainvil counts the seconds until his radio show goes live. The show, Masisi Radio, airs twice a week and showcases performances that highlight the Black and queer artists of Miami.
Operating in a warm and lush green hub, fellow artists take turns playing music that ranges from R&B and hip-hop to jazz, EDM, reggaeton and pop. While their unique sounds fill the space, viewers who follow the show through live-streaming platform Twitch fill the chat with fire emojis.
Dorsainvil watches from behind the camera, dancing and cheering on the performers, his spirited laughter complementing the upbeat tunes. He is firm when he calls out an artist on the timing of their performance but quickly returns to good-natured banter.
“I am very happy that I’ve been able to be a part of birthing a new generation of artists here in Miami,” said Dorsainvil, “as well as to stand with them as peers.”
Dorsainvil, who goes by he/they pronouns, is a fourth-generation Haitian American who was born and raised in the coastal city of Lake Worth, FL. At 13, he joined a local hip-hop dance company and got his first job at an ice cream shop to buy a plane ticket to travel with his dance team to New York.
As a high school student at Lake Worth High, he spent his free time at dance competitions and performing as a backup dancer for local artists and drag queens.
After he graduated high school, he attended Palm Beach State College and pursued a degree in Mass Communications and Journalism. On the weekends, Dorsainvil would partake in gallery openings and art walks in Wynwood, and party at dance clubs like Purdy Lounge. Miami, he said, taught him more than school did. At 20 – one and a half years into college – he dropped out.
Miami’s arts and dance scene was where Dorsainvil found a connection with other queer people. Dorsainvil can recall being labeled the Creole homophobic term “masisi” throughout their adolescence. Inspired by the movement of Black Americans who reclaimed the n-word and the Slutwalk movement, Dorsainvil reclaimed the word when he cofounded the Masisi Collective in September of 2019, a year after he moved to Miami.
The collective’s goal is to create spaces for queer and trans people of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Miami. Mirroring his leadership and action, a big, bold-lettered sign over their performance in the hub reads “Nou pa wont,” a Haitian phrase meaning both “Aren’t we ashamed?” and “We are not ashamed.”
The beginning, however, was rough: Though Masisi Collective’s debut party “Dancehall” was a huge success, with Black, brown queer people celebrating on the dance floor, COVID-19 hit shortly after. Confined in their homes, Dorsainvil and his collaborators needed to find ways to keep themselves and their work alive. They created Masisi Zoom Parties, which were joined by people in Miami, New York and L.A.
With cameras on and mics off, the parties resembled a silent disco where everyone was in their own world, “twerking” in their bedrooms and dancing with their loved ones. Dorsainvil even recalled a flag twirler who interpreted the music with a number of tricks.
Since the inception of Masisi Collective and, five years later, Masisi Radio, he hopes to provide queer and Black artists with the space, tools and resources he himself lacked while he began DJing. To him, putting a microphone in someone’s hands and allowing them to freely express themselves is an act of empowerment – and it helps that every once in a while, he, too, gets to perform as his DJ persona Pressure Point.
Pressure Point – a name he chose to reflect “the visceral experience” he wants people to have when engaging with their music – was born not long after Dorsainvil turned 25, when they started experimenting with DJ equipment he got as a birthday gift. When he was asked to perform at a friend’s birthday party, Dorsainvil stated, “It felt like water to a flower.”
Five years on, his career as a DJ continues to blossom, and he hopes to keep working with and empowering fellow artists of Miami’s marginalized communities.
For those who are afraid to be vocal about their identities, he has a powerful message: “Say it anyway…because when all this is said and done, you have to live with the life that you created.”
By Heidi Aleman and Ruth Santana, Miami Times Contributors
