Bringing Budots and SEA dance music to the world!

“Budots is a playful, deliberately tacky Filipino genre of dance music that originated in the barangays (villages) of Davao City, Mindanao, in the late 2000s. Often described as “barangay techno” or “street techno,” budots is inspired by the noise, joy, and systemic violence on the streets of Davao. It’s a sound born from the very communities, the urban poor, that have been the primary targets of Duterte’s “War on Drugs” and extrajudicial violence of “Davao Death Squads.” This context is crucial for Filipino Americans and a global audience to understand: in an environment where being poor or simply being accused of being associated with drugs can be a death sentence, this dance is an act of defiance. It’s a way to reclaim the body and to find joy in a state of extreme precarity. Everyone who’s down to get silly is invited to try – as long as they can get low.”