What is Southeast Asia’s place in this new, decentralized world of dance music led by sounds from Africa, Brazil, and diasporic scenes in the West? That’s a question that Marco Pedro’s been asking himself repeatedly, and he’s been putting in the work to grow solid organizational roots in his hometown of Manila that stretch across the world. As cofounder of the Orange Juice Asia collective, he’s putting on for sounds including everything from baile funk and afrohouse, to Jersey club and gqom, and even the homegrown sounds of budots from the Philippines (which is very similar to Thai 3cha). To drive home the range of his musical interests, the P°LANET shirt he wore at Blaq Lyte UV features a long list of sounds that ends with, “And genres we don’t even know.”
Orange Juice Asia, which also includes Manila Junkie and Shingen, has been very strategic in their efforts to bring these often unfamiliar global musics to new crowds in Manila. It’s been as much of an educational mission as it’s been a pure vibe. What started as a mixtape series during the pandemic bloomed into a party scene as the lockdowns slowly opened up. “We stayed consistent online until they ended, then everyone stopped listening to mixtapes and started going out,” Pedro says. “So we shifted our focus to production and edit packs and stuff.” These edit packs—along with interviews with artists, playlists, and more—would lay the groundwork to prime their crowds before each party they threw.
To introduce these sounds to the dancefloor, OJA started with remixes and edits, using familiar tracks blended with global genres to ease partygoers into the music. Once they start to pick up on what’s happening, then the crew introduces the authentic sounds from the regions they come from. “It took a while, but the crowds in Manila are more open to different stuff,” Pedro says. “There are a few clubs now where they’re really open-minded and it’s growing enough that we throw parties twice a month.”
Pedro says they hit a milestone a couple of months ago when they booked Brazilian artist Pantera: “He really set the bar. We used to do heavy marketing and it’d be good, but this was the first time where the DJ didn’t have to adjust to the crowd and just played what they wanted to play.” He attributes this to the popularity of baile funk on TikTok, but also to the surprising amount of Brazilians living in Manila. “They brought their flags and jerseys to the show. We ran ads and all the comments were in Brazilian!” He says that Filipinos were already learning the dance moves, and some were even doing the dances on the booth during the Pantera party; but since then, everyone in the crowd does them when the tracks drop.
The growth in these sounds is new to the Southeast Asia, and the rise of global club in Manila is happening alongside other places like Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur. When Pedro first played in Jakarta, it was eye-opening: “I realized we have a market there, we have reach there.” They followed up with a regional tour hitting several cities. And this month he played in Bangkok at Rover for Noise Axe and Shophouse for UV. In Thailand, Pedro says the crowds reacted to pretty much everything he played, but that the more electronic sounds hit best.
“World music is very accessible, you can play a lot of these sounds anywhere if you choose right,” Pedro says. And because of this, he’s been able to collaborate with a lot of the different party crews in Manila, ranging from techno, house, and rap scenes. “We want to bring more attention home. We want people to see what’s happening there. Whoever we bring in is always surprised there’s a scene.”
Pedro also thinks it’s time to bring Filipino music to the stage, which can be a tricky thing even in Manila. “I’ll play one or two tracks of budots. For a Manila audience, when you hear it in the club, you get hype, and then you move on. You hear some occasional Original Pinoy Music throwbacks in the club too. And you can slip in a few current local artists. These are all moments. They hear these tracks and go crazy and then that’s it.” Now it’s time to bring those sounds global. “We’ve been introducing foreign sounds to Manila, now it’s our turn to introduce Original Filipino Music to foreign audiences. Sounds like budots could be our baile funk, they’re something we can represent.”
