’Asia Rising Forever’ trends online as 88rising gang come together for the online music festival

Through a virtual music festival called “Asia Rising Forever,” record label 88rising celebrates the most exciting Asian talent in the world for a cause.

The livestream on Thursday, May 7 features a vibrant range of at-home performances by artists like Rich Brian (Indonesia), Kang Daniel (South Korea), and Iñigo Pascual of the Philippines.

The lineup also includes the Higher Brothers (China), Phum Viphurit (Thailand), LOONA (South Korea), Niki (Indonesia), Beabadoobee (London), and many, many, very many more.

The Asia Rising Forever festival aims to raise money for the Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), an affiliation of Asian American civil rights organizations, in light of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

As rapper Dumbfounded explains at the beginning: “All the donations collected from this livestream will go towards the fight against racism and harmful xenophobic attacks in our communities in the US and all around the world that have escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Pascual, who belted it out to the cover of Post Malone’s “Better Now” from a make-shift studio, said he was happy to be part of the initiative.

“My goal as an artist is just honestly to just be able to bring OPM — which is original filipino music — to the world stage…And Asia Rising doing this for a bunch of asian artists and kind of bridging the gap between all the other countries,” he said.

“I feel like its a perfect way to connect people through music,” he added.

The livestream has already raised $22,188 as of writing and with more than 222K tweets, has remained at the top of Philippine trends on Twitter all through Thursday. — Margaret Claire Layug/LA, GMA News