For us millennials, the culture of house music has been handed to us on a silver platter. If you’re 14, you'd go to an open party and the self-made DJ transitions Martin Garrix to The Chainsmokers – only for sheer accompaniment to your T-Ice and freshman naiveté. Or maybe you were a 10-year old kid forced to dance along to Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction for intrams. It is debatable whether acts like The Chainsmokers really is house. The point is, you have been living among the many by-products and vague sub-genres stemming from the influence of house music; more specifically, the influence of the subculture that was rave.
At present, if you're aching to hear quality-driven electronic music, you could easily look up the gig sched of your patronized disc jockey and book an Über to Black Market or TodayXFuture. What a time to be alive! Manila nightlife is not so much of a monopoly as it used to be, with an enticing platter of bars, warehouses, and clubs, you won’t have to drag yourself to over-saturated EDM Meccas like Pool Club. However, for the Gen-Xers of 90’s Manila, it didn’t come easy. If you wanted to hear Mr. Fingers and other authentic house from hubs like Chicago or Manchester, it’d be an impossible feat to hear it play in your local club.
(A flyer for Euphoria)
In the late 80’s to early 90’s, notable lounges and clubs like Euphoria or Mars would attract teenagers dressed in their Ralph Lauren while playing songs from the Billboard Hot 100. Many attempts were made to provide fresh house music by organizing raves, but no other production pulled it off quite how Consortium did.
(The guys of Groove Nation, circa 1998)
A week ago I sat down to interview Toti Dalmacion: to many youngins he is the man behind Terno Recordings and This Is Pop! Records, but try asking your tita who he is and you’ll get nostalgia-ridden answers of Toti’s past-persona. In the 90’s, he was known for his record store Groove Nation and his spearheading of raves by Consortium. He once called himself “The Prophet of Doom”, remembering being irritated by the lackluster quality of raves upon his arrival from L.A. to Manila. The word “rave” had been loosely used to throw parties typical in the Manila fashion of sosyalan. Toti tells me, “No one was really dancing. It was more of to be seen, with music in the background and people just nodding their heads and drinking.” This was until he formed Consortium, “a roving underground party” aimed to push the envelope for raves in the Philippines – to make it less about high society and more about the music.
(Derrick May at one of the Consortium raves)
Back in L.A., Toti frequented underground warehouse parties. He had met legendary house personalities, such as Derrick May and Marques Wyatt, and went to raves being busted by cops. He was enthralled by the whole scene, and upon going back to Manila he was itching to bring Filipinos what he had experienced.
Consortium was notorious for hosting raves in off-the-wall venues. One of which was a warehouse in Star City, gracing legendary acts like Doc Martin and Ken Ishii.
(Ken Ishii’s set for Consortium, 1996)
“We did it at the Shangri-La Mall food court when it wasn’t even a food court yet,” Toti recalls. Other venues were the Philippine Daily Inquirer warehouse, and the most notable one, a rave in the National Library.
(The flyer for the National Library rave)
“Malate was THE place then for bohemians and similar tribes if you wanted to escape the Makati crowd,” he tells me. Here, the guys of Consortium would give out flyers pointing out directions to when and where their next rave would take place.
In a sense, Consortium had been a maverick in shifting Manila youth culture to a whole new direction. What set it apart from clubs like Euphoria was that Consortium wasn’t tied down to giving into commercial song requests. They played what they wanted to play, and the rest of Manila followed.
(Havoc’s QC store)
Consequently, the culture of Ralph Lauren polo shirts had been subverted and retired in exchange for local streetwear. Nearby students would hang-out in the Robinsons Galleria shop of Havoc Street Couture by Adam de Lumen. Staple rave fashion would be bought from brands like Grocery in San Juan, owned by Cecile Z., a regular of Consortium herself.
(Grocery, 220 Pilar Street, San Juan)
“The youth culture changed in a flash. We suddenly felt that being different was not all bad but rather more fun. Street fashion became the voice of every Filipino youth dying to break the stereotype. In that brief period, we became exposed to a new lifestyle that changed our music, style, and way of life forever,” says the unnamed author of the blog ilove90sfashion.wordpress.com.
(Hello Kitty Fashion Show at Fashion Café, 1999)
As time progressed into the new millennium, house music had met its many mutations in the form of “deep house, tribal house, Jackin’, etcetera […] As well as the proliferation of the more commercial Eurodance, prog house, trance” and of course – EDM. The use of techno and house had trickled from raves to nation-wide commercial use, spanning from barangay Christmas blow-outs to noontime shows. While the ravers of the 90’s grew up, millennials took helm of house music’s fate by attending festivals like CloseUp Forever Summer and popularizing the sound of EDM. The times they are a-changin’, and consequently one issue arises: Do millennials know their house?
Toti cynically tells me about the spoon-fed marketing that goes with artificially inseminating an idea of house music to millennials and popular culture. “They just go by what Beatport says […] Because, yeah, you have the internet. You can research and research for hours – but to really train your ears on the really good underground stuff is not really something most do because, that’s what I’m saying: It’s always spoon-fed. Beatport says, [these are] the top 100 house tracks, when you know very well, if you listen to them … some of them aren’t even house or techno, it’s just that they are marketed as such.”
The real issue here is for millennials to stop confusing what’s house and what isn’t – but house or not, it’s important to keep the legacy of Consortium by breaking the monopoly and celebrating diversity. It’s 2017 and as a millennial, it feels good to be able to choose what to listen to and where to go for the night.
Sources
Information:
Dalmacion, Toti. Personal interview. 21 Dec. 2016.
Dalmacion, Toti. “Drowning in My Nostalgia.” Blog post. The Simple Yet Complex World of The Collector. N.p., 21 Oct. 2008. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
“Wreaking Havoc Once upon a Time When We Were Young.” Blog post. We Wreaked Havoc Once Upon A Time. N.p., 10 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Sorrenti, David. “15 Nostalgic Manila Rave Flyers from the 90-00’s.” Pulseradio. Pulse Radio, 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Photos:
“A Last Chance to Make Memories at the InterContinental Manila.” The Lost Boy Lloyd. N.p., 21 July 2016. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Where did the 90’s go?. (2015, September 6). Mimi & Juliet Tan [Photo album]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/pg/WhereDidThe90sGo/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1023969774301612
Where did the 90’s go?. (2013, February 23). Grocery [Photo album]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/pg/WhereDidThe90sGo/photos/?tab=album&album_id=538284419536819
Where did the 90’s go?. (2013, February 23). Havoc Street Couture [Photo album]. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/pg/WhereDidThe90sGo/photos/?tab=album&album_id=538287306203197
“The Kids of Havoc.” Blog post. We Wreaked Havoc Once Upon A Time. N.p., 9 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
“Wreaking Havoc Once upon a Time When We Were Young.” Blog post. We Wreaked Havoc Once Upon A Time. N.p., 10 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Dalmacion, Toti. “Drowning in My Nostalgia.” Blog post. The Simple Yet Complex World of The Collector. N.p., 21 Oct. 2008. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Sorrenti, David. “15 Nostalgic Manila Rave Flyers from the 90-00’s.” Pulseradio. Pulse Radio, 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Videos:
Ken Ishii@Groove Nations CONSORTIUM 1996 Shot of Koro and Wall Graphics. Dir. Toti Dalmacion. Perf. Ken Ishii. N.p., 15 Apr. 2009. Web. 31 Dec. 2016.