Davao City in the Philippines is no stranger to theatricality, dirt, danger, eccentricity, noise and budots, a dance music genre rooted in chaos that has taken wings to fly over to Europe, taking control of the party crowd.

The electronic bassline is wonky, accented by high-pitched noises. The speedy, powerful bass captures the mayhem Davao is known for. Responsible for budots (spun off from the Bisayan slang for ‘slacker’ — budong for men, budang for women) is DJ Love, whose real name is Sherwin Calumpang Tuna. He has been making music since the 1990s from Camus Street in Davao. Today, he has a packed schedule that takes him all over the world.

Budots is headed in the same direction as reggaeton and Afrobeats, shaping modern music. You may have heard it in the form of Emergency Budots, a remix of Dr. Beat by the Miami Sound Machine, created by DJ Johnrey Masbate. Or through Olivia Rodrigo, who has Filipino heritage; she used it during an “outfit transition” trend with this sound, sparking a wave of excitement.

While working at an Internet cafe in the early aughts, DJ Love started producing songs and remixes that captured the dance seen on Davao City’s streets, something detailed in the documentary Budots: The Craze. There is also a message in many of his videos: “Yes to dance, no to drugs.”

DJ Love’s tracks are a unique mix of bouncy Bisayan songs and samples of animals and street sounds set to 140 beats per minute, complete with sirens and syncopated synths. This is called budots. Over the years, these became popular online through YouTube and TikTok. It was heard from basketball courts to political campaigns.

Before making its way to the Boiler Room platform where the underground music community is celebrated, budots appeared on Philippine TV, including the reality show Pinoy Big Brother in 2008 and the news segment Kapuso Mo Jessica Soho in 2012.

Politicians too picked it up, like in the run-up to the country’s 2016 election, with the former president Rodrigo Duterte getting filmed delivering clumsy steps. So did actor-producer Bong Revilla Jr., then fresh out of prison from a plunder charge and shifting into his political campaign for senator.

The dark side

Davao is not for the weak-hearted. The biggest city on the island of Mindanao is no stranger to insurgencies. It is also home to one of the smelliest fruits, the durian, and former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is often dubbed “Duterte Harry”, a reference to Dirty Harry, the fictional American detective played by Clint Eastwood who takes the law into his own hands.

Duterte believes he is “solving crimes against innocent people”, but what he is accused of are crimes against humanity for ordering a brutal anti-drug campaign in which tens of thousands of people died. Imprisoned in The Hague, he managed to win the Philippines’s mayoral election in May this year. He rules through the acting mayor, his son Sebastian Duterte. In Davao, where Duterte remains popular, his dynasty is thriving.

Davao City is also home to Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed hitman and whistleblower. He once fed a man to a crocodile and ended people’s lives with his .45-caliber Colt M1911 pistol. He has confessed to his crimes and said the person who ordered the “bloodletting” was Rodrigo Duterte.

Life here is not easy. The smell of diesel is always in the air. Diesel engines roar at the back of open-air vans called jeepneys and trucks are plentiful. You can’t escape the incessant honking, pushcart vendors ringing bells, the sound of people quarreling and dogs barking away. Over 3.7 million people in the Philippines live in packed, communal dwellings called barangays, according to the United Nations. Budots is a reflection of all this and more. What you hear in budots is what you hear when you are in Davao City.

Stay away from drugs

No wonder, budots is something people relate to. The directors of the documentary Budots: The Craze — Jay Rosas and Mark Limbaga — said the “weirdly annoying-alluring popular appeal of budots emanated from among the grassroots communities in Davao City, in the nooks and crannies of squatter areas where Sherwin Tuna, considered as the originator of budots music, lives and breathes”.

The blood-drenched war on drugs has been hard on the Philippines. Duterte’s push to stamp out drugs began after his 2016 election victory. “Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor,” he said at his final campaign rally. “You drug pushers, holdup men and do-nothings, you better get out because I’ll kill you.”

The Philippine government in June 2022 reported that at least 6,252 people had died “during anti-drug operations” since July 2016, reports The Washington Post.

Often left to look after themselves while their parents work, children in barangays in Davao City have higher rates of addiction than in the rest of the country. They are often found sniffing glue. One of the goals of budots is to draw children away from this culture.

When people are seen dancing to budots, there is a move that mimics glue-sniffing. The message is simple: Stay away from drugs.

What is budots without dancing? There is a good level of gyration. Provocative? Yes. Vulgar? No. It’s a message to embrace everyone. Men or women, young or old, everyone is welcome to join in. All they have to do is get low and dance. When the dance started around 2010, one wondered if the craze would continue. It does. In full swing. Beyond Davao City. Beyond the Philippines. It’s an “emblem” of Davao’s idiosyncratic popular culture.