Rebel Salute brings roots-reggae celebration to Miramar for South Florida debut

Maxi Priest, Mykal Rose and Tony Rebel gave South Florida a first taste of Rebel Salute’s roots-reggae muscle on April 19 at Miramar Regional Park, a debut that felt bigger than a concert booking. The eight-hour show, set to start at 2 p.m., placed one of Jamaica’s most closely identified culture festivals in the middle of a city that already speaks reggae’s language.

Tony Rebel had said the event had been postponed before because of weather concerns, but the rescheduled date arrived with clearer skies and a stronger sense of purpose. Alongside Maxi Priest and Mykal Rose, the lineup named Louie Culture, LUST and Chalice, a bill that leaned hard into the festival’s high-consciousness identity rather than chasing a pop crossover. Rebel Salute has long branded itself around culture, with a no meat, no alcohol, no drugs and no weapons ethos, and the event’s Herb Curb, introduced in 2016, has become part of that wider message.

The choice of Miramar was no accident. Miramar Regional Park Amphitheater is officially described as a 90,000-square-foot venue with 3,000 covered seats under a nearly $2 million canopy and another 2,000 lawn seats, giving the debut a real production footprint. The park also already hosts the annual Grace Jamaica Jerk Festival, so Rebel Salute was stepping onto ground that has seen Caribbean crowds gather before.

Miramar itself gave the move extra weight. City records say Mayor Wayne M. Messam is a first-generation American born to Jamaican parents, and a 2025 Ole Time Fair release described him as being of Jamaican heritage. U.S. Census Bureau figures put Miramar’s 2024 population estimate at 143,242, with 42.4 percent foreign-born and 51.0 percent of residents age 5 and older speaking a language other than English at home. For a reggae festival built in Jamaica, those numbers read like a built-in audience.

The festival’s history added another layer to the South Florida debut. Rebel Salute first staged on January 15, 1994, Tony Rebel’s birthday, at Fayor’s Entertainment Complex in Mandeville with Garnet Silk as headliner. It later moved to Port Kaiser Sports Club in St Elizabeth and then to Plantation Cove in St Ann in 2013. The 2026 Jamaica edition was set for one night only on January 17 before it was canceled after Hurricane Melissa, making the Miramar date feel like both a recovery move and a cultural export. Billboard has described Rebel Salute as the Caribbean’s largest showcase of roots reggae and culturally themed dancehall, and in Miramar that reputation finally crossed into South Florida.