My co-host Lolo has been operating her record store here in Little Haiti since 2005. And
she comes from a musical family. I can't
wait to find out why she chose this neighborhood for her store and how music has shaped her
life and her career, let's go. Lolo, how
you doin? Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Lolo Reskin, my cohost, she is the owner
of Sweat Records here in Miami. So you
come from a long history of record stores and musicians?
Just music in general, my grandfather Allen was a violin player, my grandmother Joan was
actually a violin soloist who toured and
put out records and was kind of a pioneering female in that world, back in the 40s and
50s.
[Jumaane] Right.
Which I'm super proud of, obviously. And my dad went to Julliard for trumpet and he's
still an active working musician and composer,
but my grandfather Allen back in the day, he had a musical instrument and classical
sheet music store in Coral Cables, called Allegra
Music. So that's like, I'm the second Reskin to open a music store in Miami, even though
they didn't do records, and we don't do
instruments, but same world.
Exactly, yeah no that's cool. So this is really nice that you're just keepin the family tradition
of music alive.
Yeah I mean they really instilled it in me and I realized that, thankfully at a very
young age, that if I didn't have a career that
focused on music, I wouldn't be a happy person. When I was 16 I got a job at the Virgin Mega
store that used to be in Miami, which
was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, I was thrilled. I was so happy to be
there, and I literally would do any
menial task that they asked me for any amount of time. For me, it was an incredible experience,
you know, to work in this temple of
music that had hundreds of thousands of CDs, of genres that I'd never even you know, thought
about.
At that point did you think, oh, one day I'm gonna have my own record store.
Not in the beginning, but after a few years, and after a few years in the DJ and Indie
band and night club scene, I did sort of
start thinking and basically had a moment where I thought, hey, I want there to be this
shop, why not me. I've sold music to so many
people in the city and I know what the scene's like and what people are interested in.
[Jumaane] How did you end up here?
[Lolo] In Little Haiti?
[Jumaane] In Little Haiti, yeah.
So we originally opened in 2005 down in what they call Edgewater now. Unfortunately Hurriane
Wilma had other ideas for that
location, and it was destroyed at the end of 2005. And thankfully, we're actually nextdoor
to Churchill's pub, which is a Miami
musical landmark. It's a British bar that's been here in Little Haiti since 1978 and thankfully
the old owners after the hurricane
destroyed Sweat, offered us a kind of temporary space inside the bar towards the back. So
we had a temp space at Churchill's and then
we always knew that we wanted this space that was kind of empty and we pretty much put dibs
on it and as soon as it became available,
moved right in.
[Jumaane] So you have the record store, now you also DJ?
Yeah, definitely. I've been DJ-ing out in public since I was in my teens, in high school
and I've done it ever since. I love playing
music for people, watching the room. When I first started playing, I was playing some
really collectic music, I was really into music
from Japan and in the late 90s it was really hard to buy vinyl from Japan and if you could
find a piece, it was like 50 dollars a
piece. So I pretty much started on digital, just by virtue of necessity. And I continued
on that for a while until I switched to pure
digital. My record collection is very awesome and it stays at home where it's nice. Once
in a while, I DJ vinyl out, but more for
like special occasions or theme sets. But I still love to do it.
Well Lolo, thanks for sharing your musical history with us and I see the outside of your
building's also a homage to a musical
history.
Yeah, we call it our wall of idolatry and you know, there's a lot of people in music
we love that get a lot of credit, we wanted to
give some credit to people who don't get as much always. So we have our heroes. Like Iggy
Pop and Grace Jones and Bjork and Prince
and people that have made our lives and music better just by being exposed to what they
do. So I can't wait to share Jumaane's story
with you. His dad was actually a gallerist and he's been carrying on that legacy. First
in Chicago and Detroit, then to Wynwood and
now in his new space that's opening up right here in Little Haiti. Let's go see what he
has to show us. We're here at the brand new
Little Haiti location of N'Namdi Contemporary which is the awesome art gallery run by my
fantastic cohost, Jumaane. You've been in
the arts pretty much your whole life, right?
Well my father, he started at the G R N'Namdi gallery back in 1981 and his whole thing,
he was a developmental psychologist. So he
was like, well you know, a way to really get people to understand their culture and themselves
is through the arts, so what I'm gonna
do is start a gallery and I'm gonna get people to collect and preserve their culture through
the arts and give them a sense of
foundation in themselves. So I grew up with that mentality about the art, so I just really
grew up around these great artists who
became friends and family to me and just havin the opportunity to see it everyday and I knew
one day, well I thought I was gonna go
into education, to tell you the truth. Like my mom who started a school. And realized
the kids didn't really listen to me. I was more
like a friend. So I said, you know what, this is not working, so then I said, well you know,
I wanna be in the family business, I'm
just so happy I appreciate art. And you know, back in 97 when I graduated, my father had
opened a new gallery in Chicago. So I went
to Chicago, I ran that gallery for 15 years and I said, you know, I wanna open a gallery
in a whole new place. And my buddy who lives
in Miami who I went to school with, he had been there, been here since graduation. He
said, come to Miami and I discovered Wynwood, I
saw Little Haiti. I wish I would've got Little Haiti then, but that's cool, I'm there now.
This is my seventh year now.
[Lolo] Tell us a little bit about sort of what your specialties in art are and some
of the artists that you work with the most or
are the most passionate about at the moment?
Okay, so when the gallery started we had these master abstractionists, like Ed Clark, Frank
Bowling, Al Loving, Jack Whitten,Bendel.
And these were artists that are in major museums and my father was like, yo we can really get
these artists into people's homes,
cause you know, you go to a museum, you don't think you can have that at home. And so I
still work with those artists today. Like
matter of fact, this is a Ed Clark behind us, a Frank Bowling's over here. Those artists
I still work with but over time, I've
started to branch on younger artists.
So I get asked a lot about my record collection, and now it's my turn to get to ask you about
your art collection, which I'm sure is
expansive.
Well, I mean I love collecting art. And that becomes a problem sometimes I would say because
I keep collecting art and it's hard for
me to sell things sometimes, cause I'm like, no I wanna keep that. So at this point I'm
really trying to say, okay, this is my
collection. These are pieces I'm going to sell. Because like my father has you know
hundreds of pieces in his art collection. I have
a few hundred pieces in my art collection and that's my number one passion, is collecting
art. I mean the selling is cool but that's
more of a service because I want you to collect art, I want you to have the, you know, find
the joy that I find.
So I'm sure with this move to Little Haiti, you've now got plans for, you know, just new
exhibitions, new events and maybe new
artists you're working with? So tell us a little bit about that.
The whole point is really to bring all the artists together there. So that's gonna be
from different generations, different styles,
I just really wanna make it a really cool, collectic space that we all can enjoy. I just
love the culture there. I feel like the arts
are really movin in that direction, I mean I just love the comradery of the galleries
in the neighborhood.
Jumaane, thank you so much for this incredible tour of your beautiful gallery.
Thank you.
I wanna ask you about this one last piece here. This one, might belong to your dad?
Yeah.
For now.
Well it's his piece. It's artist, Ed Clark. You know he paints with a push so he can get
that stroke. I've been tryin to get it from
my pop for a little while, so he might sell it to me one day, you know. People always
think he's just passing down everything, like
no.
No, but you go the right route.
Yeah.
And for everyone at home who wants to check out what you have comin up, what's the best
place online for them to do that?
Well if you just wanna hang out and just appreciate the art that's all good. N N Contemporary
dot com.