On Saturday, October 21, more than a hundred people packed a white-walled warehouse in Hermosa to get sweaty to Filipino dance music. It was the launch party for the newest imprint of Feeltrip Records, Balikbayan Worldwide, which focuses on sounds from the southeast Asian diaspora. To many of the partiers, the event was just an excuse to get down. But as the night went on, event organizers noticed the crowd was mostly Asians and Asian Americans who’d come not only from around the city but also from across the country and even the world. It felt surreal to see who’d been drawn to that room by the power of music.
Feeltrip cofounder David Beltran, 39, leads Balikbayan Worldwide, and he opened the night spinning records as David Can’t DJ. But neither the label nor the party could’ve happened without the collaboration and support of his Filipino dance-music community. It includes sisters Francine and Flo Almeda, who are 26 and 23 (Flo DJs as Floreyna), and Michael Balangue, who’s 26 (aka Anito Soul). Flo and Balangue live in New York, and Francine lives here. All four of them performed that Saturday, along with headliner Alyana Cabral (T33G33), a Manila-based artist who was on her first American tour after a Boiler Room appearance in the Philippines a few months ago.
Beltran hatched the idea to start a southeast Asian–focused label while visiting the Philippines in May 2023. In 2017, a friend had connected him via Instagram to Manila-based DJ and producer Jorge Wieneke, then making work as similarobjects, and that year Beltran reissued Wieneke’s 2016 beat tape Raw Philippine Love Songs. When Beltran went to the islands himself, he connected with Wieneke, who exposed him firsthand to a dizzying variety of music and culture. Beltran couldn’t stop texting Francine and his business and romantic partner, Diana…
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