Calendar for the week

thursday
september 5
Boukman Eksperyans: Get ready to sweat. Haitian roots supergroup Boukman Eksperyans brings its revolutionary spirit to Rezurrection Hall at Club Nu (245 22nd St., Miami Beach) tonight at 9:00. Boukman, Vodou music's answer to the Rolling Stones, is currently on a world tour in support of its latest album Libete (Pran Pou Pran'l!) (Freedom [Let's Take It!]). Miami-based reggae singer Johnny Dread and Haitian chanteuse Emeline Michel will join the band at this Miami show, a benefit for Radio Station WDNA-FM (88.9). Tickets are exactly $12.88. For more information, call 535-9016. (JC)

Miami Light Project Drumming Jam Sessions: The premise behind this multiartist, city-wide percussion exhibition is somewhat misguided: Some of Miami's finest musicians are gathering in clubs and venues in various ethnic communities across the city to perform for a New York-based composer/conductor (Havana-born Tania Leon) commissioned by Miami Light to write a piece that will celebrate the various sounds of the city. In other words, a hotshot outsider is coming down to write a piece inspired by the music heard in Little Havana, Little Haiti, and elsewhere. (Too bad the musicians who perform in those places every weekend aren't given the chance to write their own commissioned pieces.) Whatever the case, it ought to be fun, and anyone too thickheaded to seek this stuff out on his or her own should take the opportunity provided during this eight-day event, which kicks off tonight at Cafe Nostalgia (2212 SW Eighth St.) with a lineup featuring such greats as Oscar Salas and Mannie Lopez-Font sitting in with Grupo Nostalgia, the club's excellent house band. Call 531-3747 for more information. (JF)

friday
september 6
Menaka Thakkar & Company: Community Concerts opens its 40th anniversary season with a performance by Indian dancer-choreographer Menaka Thakkar. For more than 25 years, the Bombay-born, Toronto-based Thakkar's critically acclaimed performances have embodied the drama and emotion of traditional Indian dance while seamlessly integrating Eastern and Western dance forms. Accompanied by live musicians, Thakkar and her company of dancers will perform stunning solo works and elaborate dance dramas tonight at 8:00 at the North Miami Beach Performing Arts Theater (17011 NE Nineteenth Ave., North Miami Beach). Tickets cost $15 and $20. Call 538-2121. (GC)

Lost Boyz: Studio 183 (2680 NW 183rd St.) explodes with the positive, hard-hitting hip-hop sounds of the Lost Boyz and A+. Lost Boyz, who hail from the south side of Queens, New York, hit the charts recently with their single "Renee," off their Billboard Top 10 debut album, Legal Drug Money. Thirteen-year-old rapper A+ is creeping up the charts with his latest tune, "All I See." Opening the show are Stylez Unlimited and Plan Be. Tickets to this all-ages show cost $20. Doors open at 9:00. Call 621-7295. (GC)

Bad Religion: No one who was around back in the early Eighties, scarfing up records by any band that looked even mildly threatening, could have pegged Bad Religion as punk-rock careerists. The energetic but utterly generic hard-fast blur of the band's early records, its incredibly misguided '83 foray into art-rock (Into the Unknown), and the unspectacular vocals of Greg Graffin all added up to a certain place in the oblivion of hardcore history. Well, go figure: Fifteen years after their debut, the members of Bad Religion are enjoying their elder punksmen status, receiving press props from a legion of punk prowlers, including Green Day and the Offspring. Ex-Religion guitarist/producer Brett Gurewitz has turned the group's Epitaph label into a wildly influential and profitable concern, while the current version of the band -- recording these days for Atlantic -- has released The Gray Race, a snarling compendium of tight, tuneful, and anthemic two-minute stompers full of heart, fury, and social consciousness. You can catch the group tonight at Rezurrection Hall at Club Nu (245 22nd St., Miami Beach) with opening acts Goldfinger and ancient punks the Meatmen. Tickets are $15; doors open at 9:00. Call 535-9016 for more information. (JF)

Maria Falzone and Paul Bonin-Rodriguez: The Miami Light Project concludes Come Out Laughing, its annual gay and lesbian stand-up comedy series, with performances by Mary Falzone and Paul Bonin-Rodriguez tonight and tomorrow at 9:00 at the Colony Theater (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach). Boston native Falzone returns to Come Out Laughing after a performance at last year's series, with more tales of her Sicilian heritage and Beantown upbringing. San Antonio's Bonin-Rodriguez will perform excerpts from his series of one-man shows, The Texas Trinity, in which he explores growing up gay and Latino in Texas by portraying 43 different characters. Tickets cost $15. Call 531-3747.(GC)

saturday
september 7
Festival Miami: The University of Miami School of Music presents its thirteenth annual international classical music festival, beginning tonight at 7:00 with a centennial celebration of the birth of famed Brazilian pianist Guiomar Novaës, and featuring a lecture by author, pianist, and critic David Dubal; at 8:00, Irish pianist Barry Douglas performs Schubert's Four Impromptus, Beethoven's Sonata no. 23 (Apassionata), Debussy's Pour le Piano, and Chopin's Sonata no. 3. Tickets cost $35. On Wednesday at 8:00, pianist Carlo Grante, oboist John Dee, and bassoonist Luciano Magnanini perform works by Poulenc, Saint-Saëns, and Willard Elliot. Tickets cost eight dollars. Upcoming concerts include performances by Corey and Katja Cerovsek, Eugene Fodor, Jose Lopez, the London Baroque, Marvis Martin, and many others. The festival continues through October 26. All concerts take place at the Maurice Gusman Concert Hall (1314 Miller Dr., Coral Gables), unless otherwise noted. Call 284-4940. (GC)