Inside the UK’s first festival dedicated to East and Southeast Asian alternative culture and music

Spaces Between the Beats is a series spot­light­ing music and cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties around the world, explor­ing their sto­ries as they build resilience and find mean­ing and hope in connection.

It’s mid­night in the expan­sive base­ment of Hackney’s EartH and rap­per Jian­bo stands at the tip of the stage. He’s backed by a crowd as dense as the dance­floor that he over­looks, flanked by friends, singers and rap­pers includ­ing BABii, Namani, Nix North­west and SHAYK. As the DJ runs a weighty half-grime, half-dub­step rid­dim, he rais­es the micro­phone to his lips, shout­ing: ​“Sam­bal / Sam­bal / Sam­bal, sam­bal, sam­bal, sambal!”

‘Sam­bal’ is an unre­leased track from the south­east Lon­don hail­ing rap­per, who wrote it when he vis­it­ed an Indone­sian restau­rant in Malaysia’s cap­i­tal city of Kuala Lumpur, and the spice lev­el of the sam­bal – a chili paste found across South­east Asia with end­less region­al vari­a­tions – caught him off guard. ​“Indone­sian sam­bal is real­ly spicy com­pared to Malaysian sam­bal, I felt like I was on drugs,” he recalls. ​“Doing that one on stage at Mar­gins Unit­ed was a dif­fer­ent lev­el of pop off. Every­one was lov­ing it, the crowd was going crazy, peo­ple onstage going crazy – the ener­gy was just right. And it’s just a sil­ly song, it’s just about fuck­ing sambal.”

Through­out the 45 min­utes of Jian­bo and Friends at Mar­gins Unit­ed – a 12-hour, day-and-night event organ­ised by East and South­east Asian (ESEA) col­lec­tive East­ern Mar­gins – the rapper’s sig­na­ture vel­vety smooth flow tops a cycle of tracks that encom­pass 2‑step, drill, dub­step, hip hop and more. It’s a show­case of UK rap exe­cut­ed impec­ca­bly with east­ern flair, by an artist born to Viet­namese-Chi­nese parents.

“Grow­ing up, my musi­cal inspi­ra­tion wasn’t real­ly Asians,” Jian­bo says. ​“I grew up around Black peo­ple, South Asians, Arab peo­ple in south­east Lon­don – uni­ty vibes, everyone’s always been from every­where. But no one talks about being East or South­east Asian as a part of UK cul­ture – my main pre­rog­a­tive is to leave a mark on the culture.”

It’s a mis­sion that’s been at the fore­front of the minds of the East­ern Mar­gins crew, which has grown to become a loose, broad col­lec­tive since form­ing in 2018, when founders David Zhou (aka Lumi) and Antho­ny Ko threw a Lunar New Year par­ty fea­tur­ing an all-ESEA line-up of Organ Tapes, Eri from Yeti Out, BBC AZN Net­work res­i­dent 2Shin and Sin­ga­pore­an singer-pro­duc­er yeule, who closed out Mar­gins Unit­ed – the UK’s fes­ti­val first ded­i­cat­ed to ESEA alter­na­tive cul­ture – in some­thing of a full cir­cle moment. The par­ty instant­ly attract­ed a heav­i­ly Asian crowd, which at the time was unheard of in UK nightlife and live music spaces, save for karaōke bars or K‑pop megas­tar concerts.

“East­ern Mar­gins is David’s baby, and it’s a space to ser­vice the under-ser­viced with the ESEA com­mu­ni­ty in Lon­don, who are espe­cial­ly under-ser­viced in the elec­tron­ic music world,” says the collective’s senior con­sul­tant Jay Eau. ​“To cre­ate a space where peo­ple can come to con­nect with peo­ple from their com­mu­ni­ty, and real­ly explore the bound­aries of music and creativity.”

Nowa­days, East­ern Mar­gins encom­pass­es a series of reg­u­lar club nights across cities around the UK, as well as a record label and book­ing agency, plat­form­ing music from the ESEA dias­po­ra all across the world. In August, they released Budots World (Reloaded), a 15-track album and label debut from Fil­ipino budots pio­neer DJ Love (real name Sher­win Calumpang Tuna). As the lore goes, the genre – which fea­tures ravey, 90s euro house synth leads and off beat basslines over fast paced four-to-the-floor rhythms – was invent­ed by Tuna while he was work­ing as an inter­net café man­ag­er in Davao City. It’s since grown to become a glob­al, online sen­sa­tion, with its own knees-bent, street dance style that’s hard to miss in cer­tain cor­ners of Tik­Tok.

Tak­ing to the stage just after 1am, fol­low­ing Jian­bo and then Malaysian hyper­pop leader Shel­hiel​’s debut UK set, DJ Love throws down a rau­cous set of budots and donks, dip­ping his knees from side to side as he per­formed the now-viral dance moves in his first ever inter­na­tion­al gig. Backed by rain­bow strip lights, with sec­tions of the crowd rock­ing flags that marked their her­itage – Thai­land, Japan, Malaysia, The Philip­pines, etc. – the moment, and indeed the whole fes­ti­val, feels like a com­ing togeth­er cel­e­bra­tion and a show­case for London’s ESEA diaspora.

“To have DJ Love come down for his first inter­na­tion­al show, that was a very spe­cial moment, and he did the dances as well,” says Jay. ​“It reminds me of [South African dance music genre] gqom com­ing out back in the day. Gqom came out of a taxi rank and budots start­ed in inter­net cafés – it’s this dif­fer­ent, but par­al­lel jour­ney to get to people’s ears inter­na­tion­al­ly. Because we released DJ Love’s album on East­ern Mar­gins, we feel very hon­oured to be giv­en this stewardship.”

The remain­der of the night sees a break­beat work­out from drum & bass futur­ist and new XL Record­ings signee gyrofield before yeule’s clos­ing set. But while exper­i­men­tal dance­floor son­ics form East­ern Mar­gins’ bread and but­ter, the fes­ti­val for­mat of Mar­gins Unit­ed pro­vides them with licence to expand their vision beyond the con­fines of the club. The fes­ti­val is bro­ken up into three phas­es, with the first two tak­ing place in the after­noon and evening in EartH’s The­atre and Kitchen spaces.

It opens with a series of film screen­ings, includ­ing a pre­mière of New Wave Doc­u­men­tary, which dives into the under­ground Viet­namese New Wave scene of the 80s in all of its gelled-hair glo­ry, as well as pan­el talks and work­shops. In the kitchen area, food is pro­vid­ed by the East and South East Asian Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre (fka Hack­ney Chi­nese Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices), along­side arts and crafts stalls and a book­shop. It resem­bles a small com­mu­ni­ty mar­ket, and pro­vides a whis­tle stop tour into the diver­si­ty of ESEA arts, cul­ture and food.

Phase 2’s pro­gram­ming most­ly takes place in EartH’s grandiose-yet-rus­tic The­atre room, where steep steps descend towards its stage. Instead of dance music, the line-up leans towards live acts, includ­ing the ambi­ent and shoegaze of LVRA & Soda Plains and ONRA’s exper­i­men­tal hip-hop pro­duc­tions. A par­tic­u­lar high­light, though, comes from punk rock­er LIA LIA. The Berlin-based vocal­ist stands in the mid­dle of her band­mates, all of them don­ning school-uni­form rem­i­nis­cent white shirts and black ties, and the group launch into a set of dis­tort­ed gui­tars and noisy grunge-punk.

“It was my debut show with the band – for the first time, I real­ly felt how my music should be played live,” she reflects. ​“Play­ing ​‘Shut Up!’ for the first time [was a real high­light]. It’s one of the new sin­gles I released recent­ly, and we total­ly raw-dogged it – no back­ing track, no click. It was just us. It felt grit­ty and real as fuck, and the crowd gave us the best energy!”

LIA is half-Chi­nese and half-Ger­man, grow­ing up between both a small vil­lage in Ger­many and the Sichuanese cap­i­tal Cheng­du – a megac­i­ty in the south­west of Chi­na. It made her feel like some­thing of an out­sider in both grow­ing up. ​“I felt iso­lat­ed grow­ing up in both Ger­many and Chi­na because both places have pret­ty homo­ge­neous pop­u­la­tions. I always stood out in some ​‘alien’ type of way, nev­er ful­ly fit­ting in,” she says. “[Play­ing Mar­gins Unit­ed] meant the world to me. Shar­ing that moment with the com­mu­ni­ty was beau­ti­ful. A lot of Asian house­holds push tra­di­tion­al careers on their kids, so see­ing so many free-spir­it­ed Asian artists pur­su­ing their dreams was super inspir­ing. It made me happy.”

Her sto­ry is tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of build­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and phys­i­cal spaces where peo­ple can express who they are. Mar­gins Unit­ed is ulti­mate­ly that. For most of the ESEA peo­ple in atten­dance, they have nev­er seen a UK rap­per, a genre-invent­ing DJ or a post-punk rock­er who looks like them per­form live, let alone all under a sin­gle roof.

“I mean damn, this is super unique right?” says Jian­bo. ​“This is the biggest ESEA music event in Lon­don ever, so it’s mean­ing­ful – it’s all new, first times. I get the feel­ing that they are let­ting us into the club, we’re build­ing our own ecosys­tem of par­ty culture.”

At around 10pm, as Phase 2 turns into Phase 3, there’s a sur­prise wait­ing in the Kitchen area for those fil­ter­ing out from the The­atre room. With sleazy house grooves mov­ing the dance­floor, man­ning the head­phones and CDJs is none oth­er than British Chi­nese actor Bene­dict Wong per­form­ing as DJ Obi Wong and The Tem­ple of Bangers. His set ends on an edit of The Black Eyed Peas 00s clas­sic ​‘My Humps’, which is under­scored by a wig­gy, min­i­mal tech house beat that goes on and on. ​“Bene­dict Wong was a sur­prise to every­one,” Jay explains. ​“He mes­saged David say­ing: ​‘I’m going to come to Mar­gins Unit­ed,’ and next thing we find out is that he’s a lit­tle bit of a DJ and want­ed to get on – we had to make it happen.”

It’s a shock, but per­haps there is no more fit­ting a spe­cial guest for an event that stamps a mark­er for the UK’s ESEA com­mu­ni­ty into the ground. ​“On a deep­er lev­el, It was real­ly cool because this is some­one that a lot of East and South­east Asians grew up watch­ing on TV and in films, when we real­ly didn’t have much rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the big screen, aside from a [token] Asian char­ac­ter,” he con­tin­ues. ​“Bene­dict Wong was always Bene­dict Wong – he was there because he was a ful­ly fleshed actor, the best per­son for the job, so it was real­ly cool to see some­one who sym­bol­ised rep­re­sen­ta­tion for kids like myself in the flesh at Mar­gins Unit­ed. Peo­ple like Bene­dict made peo­ple like us realise that this is actu­al­ly pos­si­ble, and that’s what we want to do with East­ern Margins.”

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