Budots is a form of electronic dance music that came from the slums of Davao City, Philippines. Its pioneer DJ Love used it as a medium to tackle the socio-economic strife in his home town of Davao City. It gained popularity on TikTok with its viral videos and has now grown in popularity internationally with DJ Love’s session on Boiler Room and press coverage in VICE, Mixmag and DJ Mag.
One pioneer is DJ/Producer DJ Love who’s new single ‘Sabak Sa DJ’ is out now, accompanied by a video filmed on the streets of Davao City and features the Camus Girls – the community initiative he built in Davao City that encourages young girls to learn empowerment and community through dancing to budots. As the video says, the Camus Girls are about “having fun in true Filipino spirit”. The new album ‘Budots World (Reloaded)’ is out Aug 7 via British-Asian label Eastern Margins – and DJ Love plays London for the 1st time in Sept at the Margins United Festival in EarTh Hackney, the first East and South East Asian oriented music festival in the UK, led by Eastern Margins.
1. Basecamp 21 is one of the best bars in Davao to experience and listen to Budots, it is
one of DJ Love’s personal mainstays where he plays every Saturday and Sunday he is
often invited to play here because everyone here loves Budots. This is where all the
masses of Davaoeños come to party to Budots.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083328161744
2. Aya’s Disco Bar also has some of the best budots-loving crowds, sir. They are very
supportive of Budots. Even though the venue is small, and unpopular the crowd is very
solid. Budots is the primetime music here in its purest form.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076184772673
3. Club Bodega Zamboanga –
Club Bodega is also one the best places I’ve performed at and they received budots
well. This is a super upscale club that supports Budots outside of Davao. the owner, Ms.
Reiza, has been a fan of Budots since she was in elementary school. The crowd here is
amazing and the support for Budots is incredible.
https://www.facebook.com/clubbodega.zc
4. 18 Half Bar supports Budots a lot, and it’s very upscale.. All the DJs reccomend to come
back here, especially Sir Enoc, my friend from when i used to do livestreams during the
Pandemic days. The support for Budots here is incredible. The crowd is amazing. I
noticed that this is where all the DJs I know from my livestream pandemic era meet up.
https://www.facebook.com/18halfbar
5. Apotheka – one of the best club’s I’ve played budots at in Manila ever, they dont have a
regular budots night, but you are bound to hear budots scattered around the dynamic
and diverse programmed nights they have wether on experimental nights or on their high
volume more mainstream nights too, they dont shy away from playing it and are proud of
the budots sound because they embrace it well unlike other metro manila clubs, the
owner is my friend obese.dogma777 who has been pushing and advocating budots
since before its mainstream popularity, u can feel the love for the genre reflected in the
club’s dna even if its not necessarily a budots club, when i performed here the response
was amazing and i almost cried from all the love i received there, it was very memorable
to me.
