F  L  A  U  N  T

 All clothing and accessories by **AMIRI**. Michael Brun could be said to be a songbird amongst humans, traveling to the popping reaches of the globe with a lighter than air appeal, sharing his tingly jams with those of open ears. But like songbirds, at the end of a no doubt exhausting cycle, the DJ and producer migrates back to his home in the Caribbean country of Haiti, a place where he has always been surrounded by music. “I grew up in Haiti, in Port-au-Prince,” Brun shares from Miami, where he’s popped up in—you guessed it, Little Haiti—for his photoshoot, smiling as he recounts his adolescence, “and both of my parents were involved with music somehow. My dad had a band and my mom played piano and violin. We had a studio in the house and we had a piano, but I just assumed those were normal things that most people had in their house.” Taking after his father, Brun’s music combines elements of contemporary Haitian melodies met with electronic grooves. “He loved fusing things,” recalls Brun, as he wanders Little Haiti’s Cultural Center, of his musical mentor, “he loved bringing Haitian sounds into world sounds, and I would realize, like 20 years later, when I started really digging into my career, that that’s something I wanted to do as well. I wanted to take the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America, and then fuse it with global sounds like electronic music.” This combination of sounds has given Brun a market edge and appeal all his own. The list of accomplishments goes on and on, highlighted with a “Best Urban Music” Grammy win for his work on J. Balvin’s _Colores_ album in 2020, his sold-out 2019 Bayo (“to give” in Haitian Creole) tour that he put together and produced, his performance at Coachella, and his collaborative song “Positivo” with J. Balvin that played as the theme song for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.  All of this, and Brun is still a twenty-something. It’s an impressive list for any artist, but it becomes even more remarkable when you find out that his original career goal wasn’t to be a DJ or music producer—it was to be a doctor. The now 28-year old has been making and performing his own music since he was in high school, but he always saw his endgame as being a pediatrician. Brun went to college for pre-med—biology—on a scholarship. “The reason I wanted to be a doctor—specifically, I wanted to be a pediatrician,” he shares, “is because I wanted to give back to my community. I actually wanted to be a doctor in Haiti. I make music because I love music, and I was studying medicine because I love medicine as well. But really, what I wanted to do is create community, create opportunity for others, just do what I love. And so even though the two paths are very different, they’re actually, in my opinion, pretty similar.” And it’s true. Brun—who cruises through The Northbeach Bandshell, which is run by The Rhythm Foundation, another personal favorite, then wraps his shoot during sunset at the South Beach Mondrian Hotel’s pool deck—knows the influence of music in bridging and creating community, and the joy of doing so is not lost on him. He continues to keep Haiti front and center, even as his career scales more and more globally. In 2019, his Bayo tour showcased 30 Haitian artists in America, and his latest project is the impressive and room shaking EP, _Melanin_—a collaboration with global artists across the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora. Brun also continues to nurture his desire to give back, periodically working with students at The Audio Institute in Haiti, a school for the arts and specifically music production, even recently collaborating with graduate students. Through everything he does, Brun is redefining people’s perspectives on intersectional culture, and most importantly, on that of Haiti. After all, a songbird has to fly from the nest at some point in order to make their mark on the world, but they always know their way back.  Photographer: [Ryan Hattaway](https://www.instagram.com/ryanhattaway/) Stylist: Sara Catazano Locations: [Paraiso Bay](https://www.paraisobay-miami.com/), [Little Haiti Cultural Center](https://www.miamigov.com/LHCC/Home), [North Beach Bandshell](https://www.northbeachbandshell.com/), and the [Mondrian Hotel South Beach](https://www.sbe.com/hotels/mondrian/south-beach)