Here’s a new cutting edge-music collective to be on the look out for.
In recent weeks, Ruby Ibarra has been introducing the BOLO Music Group, a collective of Filipino-American musicians.
While most Filipinos think of the bolo as a sword, for this music label it stands for “be on the look out.”
“This is better than what I was replaying in my head over and over, and I’m just thankful we get to work with an incredible team, we get to work with an incredible set of artists. I’ll just let the music speak for itself,” said Ibarra, the CEO and co-founder of the BOLO Music Group.
Ibarra along with three of the artists gave a sneak peek of their unique sounds at Spotify’s Filipino-American History Month Celebration.
While Ibarra is making waves in hip-hop from appearing on the NBA 2K soundtrack to the Cleaning Lady soundtrack, BOLO’s first wave of artists — Vince A, Ian Santillano, and Ouida — are showing off a different style of music, blending in genres like rock, pop, soul, and jazz.
“It’s about the music, about the appreciation for music, appreciation for individuality, Ruby’s appreciation for music. That’s what it really is. She’s a genius, she picked a really dope set of artists. It’s great because everyone does different things,” Vince A, a BOLO Music artist, said.
And these tracks give these Fil-Am artists a space to tell their personal stories.
“I lost my dad in 2017 to cancer and one of the last things he was able to do was tell me he he was proud of me, and this music stuff. Filipino-American people know how hard it is to be affirmed about creative things. It’s like good job for getting an A+ on your test or like good job of becoming a six-figure nurse, engineer, etc,” Santillano shared.
And no matter the genre, for Ibarra, BOLO’s mission is to push Filipino music. BOLO plans on staging a show in Oakland next month.
“What we hope to do with BOLO is really to help merge that gap between what’s going on in the Philippines and what’s going on out here because locally, globally we’re all Pinoy, Pinay, and at the end of the day what we want to do is to continue working together and continue bridging that gap,” Ibarra said.
While these three new faces will be dropping their projects soon, Ibarra is also releasing a new album — something else to be on the look out for.
