Rise & Bang This Saturday at Midline Miami

The year is 2015. An army of soon-to-be inebriated Kris Kringles and Kringlettes is preparing to take over the streets of New York City for SantaCon. The global Christmas-themed bar crawl kicks off at 10 a.m., but in the apartment of recent college graduate Ken Espinal, the pregame is underway a couple of hours early. He and his college buddies, Adrian Almonte and Jonathan Espinal, set up their DJ equipment and began spinning. To their surprise, the response is…sort of bonkers. Which is to say, amazing and overwhelmingly positive. A hundred people attend. The atmosphere is laidback yet ecstatic. “Maybe we should do this again,” they think.   

As Chaucer wrote, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” The next year, the party drew a couple of hundred. By the third Christmas party, the crew rented out a beer garden and sold out to the tune of eight hundred revelers. Featured performers have included Ashanti, Sean Paul, Bobby Valentino, A Boogie, Mya, Bobby Shmurda, Ne-Yo, and others.

Soon the 9 AM Banger, as the parties would come to be known, outgrew both Yuletide and Espinal’s apartment, and is now a veritable national institution, taking over clubs and spaces in cities across the country — including this Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Midline in Miami. “I love that we built this holistically,” Jonathan Espinal tells New Times. “No goal in mind — just following pure vibes and positive energy, which allowed us to cultivate and create this amazing community that has been such an important and exciting part of the last ten years of our lives.” 

Dubbed Perreo at 9 AM, the upcoming Miami happening tied to World Baseball Classic weekend will feature a “mix of old-school and new school reggaeton, dembow, salsa, bachata, and nonstop Perreo.” And, despite having grown into a well-regarded enough to attract sponsors ranging from Liquid Death, Spotify, and Hennessy to Ray-Ban, Red Bull, and Tito’s, it’s still an open bar from 9 to 11 a.m. “When we first hosted people in our homes, it was BYOB,” Ken Espinal says. “So, we try to maintain that same community, pregame element alive. It’s our way of staying true to our roots and giving back to the” — growing — “community that makes this possible.” 

It’s a homecoming of sorts. Miami was the first city to host a 9 AM Banger outside of New York and its sellout success is, Ken Espinal notes, “really what gave us the strength and the confidence to start tapping into these different cities.” He adds: “A lot of New Yorkers — us included — consider Miami the sixth borough.” 

No two 9 AM Bangers are the same. Every event has a theme — it might be the summer Rise & Rose party or an event that ties into, say, Women’s History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month. And the DJs and soundtrack are designed to dovetail. “As we’ve expanded into different cities, we’ve made sure to tap into the local culture,” Ken says. “Like, we don’t want to come in as outsiders and just throw a random party. We’re coming into their home so it’s important to us to show respect, to try to understand what it is their crowd enjoys, to include local DJs, to be about togetherness. That, to me, is one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of this — just learning from these different cities and cultures… As event curators and people in the music space, we make sure to keep our ears to the streets.”

At its heart, 9 AM Banger is about more than novelty or turning the dominant party paradigm on its head. It’s about providing a fun, welcoming, inclusive environment for people of all walks of life. “I never thought I’d be a morning person,” Almonte says. “But here we are — and a lot of people are here. As people get older and have family responsibilities to attend to and so forth, they maybe can’t be out all night on a Saturday anymore. But they still want to be able to enjoy the things they love. This is for them, too.”

“And, of course,” Jonathan interjects, “in Miami you’ve people who haven’t gone home yet.”

“Yeah, Miami’s a different beast,” Almonte concurs. “9 AM Banger is for everyone.” 

In the end, the art of the early morning banger is about letting the dawn illuminate each new day in its own way.

“We never forced it,” Almonte says. “We never thought it was going to turn into a quote-unquote business. We just wanted to bring our friends together, have fun, and enjoy ourselves. It took on a life of its own from there.”

PERREO at 9 A.M. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 7, at Midline Miami, 2221 NW Miami Ct, Miami. Tickets are $19.24 and available via Eventbrite.