As a UF freshman, Laila Fakhoury hung a poster of Earl Sweatshirt above her bed in her apartment.
She couldn’t have imagined that a decade later she’d book the rapper to headline the nationally recognized festival she co-produced.
Fakhoury, the 28-year-old co-founder of How Bazar and Dion Dia Records, also didn’t expect the Big: Culture & Arts Festival to go viral as organically as it did this year, having garnered attention from music news outlets like The Fader. But notoriety was never top of mind for her.
“One of the aspirations has always been to put Gainesville on the map for music, for culture and for art,” Fakhoury said. “It feels like [Big] is a big piece of that dream coming into reality.”
The fourth annual festival in downtown Gainesville became a melting pot for Florida's creative communities — as Big co-founder Jahi Khalfani put it — from April 10 to 12.
Two fenced-in city blocks hosted 140 musicians that spanned genres from hip-hop to folk rock. As they performed across the festival’s eight stages, nearly all other conceivable art forms took place in every nook and cranny of the festival grounds.
Live artists painted portraits and murals on the sidewalk, circus performers walked on stilts and spun fire props, Southwest Second Street hosted line-dancing and a car show, and the entrance of the Southwest Downtown Parking Garage saw film screenings and puppet performances.
Since the first iteration of the festival — The Big Sho’ — in 2023, Fakhoury and Khalfani intended the event to be a space that created opportunities for artists statewide.
Open mics to opening night
Gainesville’s music culture prompted rapper Vincent Cornelius to move from Atlanta around five years ago.
Cornelius, whose stagename is Creator Eornom, got his start as an artist performing at open mic events at How Bazar.
The 25-year-old rapper took the How Bazar stage again at Big at 7 p.m. Friday. He said it was surreal to be on the same bill as artists he’s looked up to, like headliner The Alchemist.
Cornelius and *kllevv., another Florida-based rapper, combined their 20-minute sets and removed the 20-minute intermission between them — playing for an hour straight and inviting friends up to perform. Cornelius also joined a cypher — a gathering of rappers — at the UWAY Stage right after his set.
The local music scene’s openness has made it easy for Cornelius to network and collaborate, he said, as has opportunities like winning Loosey’s Quarterly Recording Grant back in 2023. Big, his first festival appearance, offered the rising rapper another chance to expand his craft.
“It's definitely important, because it grants that opportunity for smaller artists to express themselves, to exert that art that they know they have and that they're capable of,” he said. “And they even ensure that every type of artist is able to do something.”
Jumping off
At the other side of the festival grounds, the smoky stage at The Atlantic opened Saturday afternoon with a group of screamy, indie-punk high schoolers: Get Bent.
The 17- and 18-year-olds rocked the normally 21-plus bar at their Big debut. Blasts of sunlight hit the room sporadically as attendees filtered in stage left. Madonna music videos played above the bar as frontman Diego Hernandez wildly jumped on and off stage and hopped atop the amps.
Get Bent – comprised of five P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School students who joined forces in “Modern Music” class – saw its performance Saturday as a jumping off point. The group hopes Big gained them some followers as they aim to start releasing music within the next few months and perform frequently over the summer before college.
Big wasn’t all that was on the band’s agenda this past weekend; it also had its three-song live recording session at Heartwood Soundstage, its prize for winning Support the Sound GNV’s battle of the bands competition.
Since playing its first gig two years ago at How Bazar, Get Bent has navigated the local music scene surrounded by nothing but kindness and support, said guitarist Sebastian Villamil. The members haven’t felt judgement for being a younger group, and they feel they’re on even ground with more established bands.
“If you're getting started, and you're getting your feet in the dirt and stuff, it's right here in Gainesville, that's where you can do it,” bassist Will Hartley said. “… Where else are you gonna find this, where you can just be a local band playing this massive festival?”
Leaving a mark
Inside Cafe Voltaire — the festival’s decompression space — attendees crocheted, crafted zines and participated in mindful breathing exercises.
Just outside, tattoo guns buzzed loudly.
Johmaris Ramos — or PrincesaPoke, her tattoo artist moniker — has attended Big all four years; as an attendee for the first two, an artist who sold nearly all her gel pen drawings for the third, and now a tattooer.
Based in Miami, Ramos has only been tattooing for just over a year. The artist set up next to her has been tattooing for 13.
Ramos was nervous leading up to the festival, but she felt the opportunity to get out of her comfort zone was a stepping stone in her career.
“It's so big, because the trust that they put in me to create the right environment for people to get tattooed and just putting that trust in me to set up and show up and do that I felt was huge, especially because I've never really done a festival at all or anything like this,” she said.
She met people who travelled all the way from Spain to attend the festival. Some of her clients left Big with tattoos to commemorate their first festival experience.
Though they didn’t travel across the pond to attend their first Big, friends Maryn Mason and Lyn Collins did drive around two hours southeast from Tallahassee.
What struck them most was the grassroots nature of the festival. The DIY, community-driven effort of the event uplifted local talent, the friends said.
“I think so much of musical success is reliant on virality or money or luck,” Collins said. “So it's cool to introduce people to Florida music in a different way.”
Contact Isabel Kraby at ikraby@alligator.org. Follow her on X @isabelgkraby.
Isabel is the The Alligator's Spring 2026 music reporter. She is a junior studying journalism at UF and is from Ormond Beach, FL. In her spare time, she loves going to concerts, crafting and practicing guitar.
