Cabu borrowed his stage name from his dad. “It was his childhood nickname,” he laughs. “It’s a shortened version of our last name.” The Filipino-Australian DJ grew up in Sydney and is now based in Manila. His style has a housey vibe characterized by big piano stabs, nimble syncopation, soulful vocals, and lofty synths. He’s well known for flipping bootlegs of Western rap and R&B tunes, but even his original productions feature warmly hummed melodies and heartfelt choral clips. His DJ sets follow a similar formula but take a wider range and embrace genres and artists from farther afield.
Although Cabu (who performed at Rover and Shophouse earlier this month with his partner Baby Oliv) is from Australia, he made his name internationally and cut his nightlife teeth outside of his hometown. “I had been trying to build myself up in Sydney for a while, but I was getting a lot more love overseas,” he explains. His label Majestic Casual played a big role in propelling that global notoriety. Sydney had some significant nightlife issues that made it hard to become part of a scene there. Back in 2013, when he would have started clubbing, there were strict laws that made going out difficult. “There was a big nightlife lockdown because of violence from clubs spilling into the street. You couldn’t enter a club after midnight or something. Once you were inside you’d have to stay there. It really killed the nightlife.” As a kid, however, he was exposed to a diverse range of music. “I grew up in Bankstown, so there’s a big Lebanese community, Samoan Pacific Islanders; I had Greek and Ghanaian friends. You’d hear your friends’ ethnic music at school lunch and stuff.”
Cabu had a shy childhood spent producing in his bedroom living vicariously through YouTube videos of his favorite DJs’ live performances. But he’s been the one in the spotlight for several years now, taking the stage in front of audiences across the world. Long gone are the distant internet relationships formed through the SoundCloud days of the mid-2010s. He says he feels bad for younger artists who need to jump through the demanding hoops of today’s algorithmic-driven multimedia landscape: “To build an audience now you have to go deep into the content world, creating all this different stuff. If you’re not into that, it can be tough.”
Although Cabu has been comfortable rocking international crowds for a couple of years now, he still fiends for quality alone time. “I fall in and out of love with DJing,” he explains. But that’s good news for us because it means he’s releasing more of his own music. “I’ve definitely been focusing on writing music lately.”
