RetroManila in Filipinas Magazine!

“Filipinas Magazine” – January 2007 Edition
www.filipinasmag.com

Virtual. Viral. Vital.
Celebrating Manila Sounds
By Christina Dunham

Recently, I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my 18th birthday (don’t bother doing the math). And what better way to commemorate 1986 than with an 80s themed party, complete with fashion and fanfare. Guests were invited to come in their best 80s get-up, from padded shoulders and power ties to banana clips and stir-up pants. The affair headlined Spintronix and Rebel Yell (an 80s band) at Rockit Room in San Francisco.

I love everything about the 80s, especially the music. What’s interesting is that a Stanford neuroscientist actually found that “most people form their basic musical tastes by the age of 20. If a new genre is introduced after age 35, there is a 95 percent chance that you will never listen to it. The window has closed.” So that explains why most of the music on my iPod is from that era. And why any new music I download sounds like everything else that I already have.

Shortly after I moved to California in 1992, word got around about Filipino parties that predominantly played 80s new wave. The parties were called “Via Manila,” started in 1993 by a group of friends yearning for “Manila Sounds – songs from the late 80s/early 90s from Europe featuring a certain pop sound,” says Via Manila DJ Gilby Villaroman. 

Going to my first Via Manila party was like going to a reunion – the faces, the scene, the energy, all felt strangely familiar. My friends and I frequented these parties, held every month at various bars and clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a real sense of community there, everyone united in spirit and moved by the music. “These types of songs were played at clubs in Manila so they were a hit with the partygoers, mostly new Filipino immigrants,” explains Dino Rivera, a DJ with Spintronix.

Virtual Networks
In 1997, another troupe called “Club Manila” emerged in Los Angeles, playing the same Manila Sounds that Filipinos craved. Club Manila founders DJs Jake Martin and Ricky Fabre were eager to bring the party to San Francisco and New York and eventually brought DJs Dino Rivera, Steve Velasco and promoter Felix Camerino (a.k.a. Gato Purrs, his AOL screen name) into the mix.

Initially meeting and interacting in AOL and IRC chat rooms, they developed virtual alliances that translated into a viable business. The first Club Manila party in San Francisco featured Fil-Am recording artist Pam Serrano and drew over 600 guests.

The chat rooms provided a dynamic forum for the events. “Postings on chat rooms like ‘PinoyPinay’ and ‘Manila’ invited people to the gatherings, which became designated events for ‘EBs’ or ‘Eyeballs’ (internet term for face-to-face meetings). A few chatters even volunteered as staff members,” according to Steve. Dino adds, “At these EBs, online chatters who had known each other online would meet in person for the first time. In fact, one of our early events was held at an Internet Café in downtown San Francisco, adding to the excitement of the internet addicts.”

Viral Marketing
With a limited budget, Via Manila and Club Manila parties mostly depended on word-of-mouth. Their established social networks – online and offline – facilitated the broadcast about the gatherings. Seasoned partygoers continued to bring newbies to the affairs, and everyone who came was encouraged to sign up for the mailing list.

“Back in the early 90’s, we solely relied on the power of snail mail. We banked on mailed flyers, word of mouth, and flyers handed out to individuals,” says Gilby. Jay de la Cruz, also a Spintronix DJ, remembers “making runs to Kinkos to print flyers and handing them out at other parties later that night and into the early morning hours.”

Gilby also explains that “email was not a big thing yet and websites were mostly in its early infancy. But we have definitely seen a shift. Email/websites/internet social groups now play a big role in these gatherings. When we celebrated the Via Manila 10th anniversary a few years ago, we relied heavily on word of mouth and the internet because we knew that our old mailing lists would have a lot of inaccuracies.”

Vital Community
The “Manila Sounds” parties were such a hit with the Fil-Am community that more were spun off. “In 1999, Steve Velasco and I joined another party promotion group called Xtreme Xposure put together by promoter Ed Matias. After that, we enlisted Alexson Lim from Spintronix and collaborated with some of the DJs from Via Manila to produce a party called FUSION in 2001,” elaborates Dino.

In 2006, Retro Manila was born. A collaboration between Via Manila, Club Manila and Spintronix, Retro Manila’s first project was “Reminisce” held in October to coincide with Filipino Heritage Month. The timing was perfect. I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my 18th birthday for an entire week, kicking off with the 80s Party and culminating with Reminisce at the Casbah Lounge in San Mateo.

At the event, DJs spun to a packed dance floor, neon pink and green strobe lights pulsated to the rhythm of the bass, while the crowd bounced in unison to OPM, New Wave and Euro-pop beats, the trademark “Manila sound.” To make the Manila club scene even more authentic, San Miguel Light beer was offered at the furiously busy bar.

A horde of over 600 guests filed into the Casbah Lounge to “Reminisce,” all there to rejoice in Manila sounds and revel in nostalgia. This was a homecoming reunion at its finest. A half dozen people I went to high school with half a world away at Colegio San Agustin (CSA) in Makati kept my husband and I company at our VIP booth. And later that evening, I ran into two other former CSA classmates: Ernie Lacson, whom I last saw in second grade, and his wife, Triccie Campos, who moved to Assumption for high school.

“Music was the big driving factor for Via Manila and Club Manila,” says Gilby. “The music, the people and the positive vibe. Definitely the reasons why we keep going back to these events. And every time we go, we always run into someone we haven’t seen in years. It’s really like a reunion!” exclaims Jenny Zabarte, a long-time party enthusiast.

As author and journalist Jane Howard says, “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” With music as the unifying force, a community was built around Manila Sounds, and it’s become a vital part of the Filipino experience here in America.