Fête de la Musique 2025 landed on a Friday, which is a cursed day to hold several music events in the densest metropolitan area in the world. Cutting across neighborhoods to catch various stages, let alone avoiding the early evening pile up of Makati’s brutal traffic, is not ideal. But that’s the chaos you sign up for when you’re part of the Fête’s Pocket Stage ecosystem. Some go for selfies, some go to scout talent. I went because I had to be in all of it — in the audience, backstage, and eventually onstage.
My first stop was the Shoegaze Stage in Mang Rudy’s along Bagtikan Street — the perfect place to pre-game the evening with chicken inasal, sinigang na bangus, and beer. Goth kids wearing frayed jackets rubbed shoulders with seasoned fans wearing band shirts like My Bloody Valentine and My Chemical Romance. Music groups like &ND and Bedtime Television built tension in the room with their slow burning reverb, while Pastilan Dong and Transmission Division engulfed the stage with their fuzzy soundscapes. It’s the kind of environment where you let the drone stretch out until it rattles something loose in you. The performances demanded a certain kind of participation — not in an aggressive way, but in that quiet, heavy-lidded head-nod kind of way.
Close Proximity Stages
The Indie Stage, in Washington Street’s Sari-Sari, inside the Thai restaurant Mooktata, saw the meeting of all types of genre-agnostic, alternative subcultures: there was a guy dressed as Luigi from Super Mario headbanging by the front row while the coquette-dressed attendees peered from the back bar. The hardcore emo kids quietly brooded by the couches while The Geeks performed their self-deprecating, jangly brand of surf rock. Whether it was dense guitar riffs of noise-pop trio We Are The Imaginary, Legazpi’s blues-punk band Fervids, or the slacker rock solo project of Noa Mal from Quezon Province, the bill also had a mix bag of local cult favorites and up-and-coming bands that traversed the range that independent music had to offer.
The Emo Stage, at Catchin’ Up! Pub along Gil Puyat Avenue, saw new faces trying to familiarize themselves with the resurging emo community that has, once again, risen in popularity over the past few years. Among those in the line-up included Disco Grenade, Lockout Season, and TNG, offering raw-to-the-bone covers of Paramore’s earlier emo-pop single “Decode,” Free Throw’s anthemic midwest emo classic “Two Beers In,” and Carpenter’s melodic definitive soft rock single “Close To You.” They chanted through different eras of emo as the stage platformed a variety of fast, chaotic emoviolence, plus some spoken word post-hardcore, under one roof.
Poblacion in Grid Lock
My final stop was in the Rabbit Hole Stage, at White Rabbit Building’s Ugly Duck, where I was set to perform. It featured electronic musicians and rap collectives that offered a completely different atmosphere from the more band-centric stages. Featuring acts like U-Pistol, Shan Capri, fresh-ill Club, and 25hearts, the Rabbit Hole Stage hopped between J-pop-influenced digicore to DJ sets spinning bass-forward dance music like future bass and U.K. garage.
The pipeline from audience member to performer felt like the quintessential side quest for a Fête weekend. My back-to-back partner that evening, electronic producer k1ko, was already fatigued from the heat and from performing as a rapper and DJ for 25hearts just an hour earlier, before heading back onstage with me. Throughout the rest of our set, we played an hour’s worth of baile funk, deconstructed club, and Miami bass.
At a time when music festivals are becoming more templated, audiences expect the same stages with the same headliners and openers. Fête’s city-stacked sprawl still embraces disorder and distance from each of its stages, as if they were alternate scenes in its purest form. Its very design forces you to chase sound through traffic, crowd, and humidity. It celebrates the chaos of concerts and the excitement of the unknown. The kind of thrill that music fans still live for.
By the end of the night, I wasn’t sure what I wanted for next year. Maybe I’ll just go as a fan and stay planted at one stage. Maybe I’ll play again but pick my battles better. It’s hard to say. Fête pulls you in different directions, and maybe that’s the point.
