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Dust, joints and Kanye: What happened at Paradise Int’l Music Festival
In the Philippines, paradise isn’t a green oasis blessed with temperate weather and filled with cascading waterfalls, friendly wildlife and endless, tasty treats. Instead it’s a dusty field with food stalls, burly security guys, throngs of people clad in tank tops, cropped shorts and sneakers, and awesome live music. At least, that was the scene at the inaugural Paradise International Music Festival last Saturday.
Close to 9,000 people attended the event at the Aseana Open Grounds according to estimates by festival organizers. While some braved the punishing heat earlier in the day, most chose to get to the venue well past sundown. Those who didn’t mind getting roasted caught the sets of a mix of artists from different genres, which was what Boardworks Media, the main entity behind the festival, promised.
Early fan favorites included Cheats (fast becoming a festival regular after appearances at Laneway in Singapore in January and Wanderland last month), Giniling Festival, Yolanda Moon, Clara Benin, Lenses, Itchyworms and Hale. Canada-based rap duo Airplane Boys made their Manila debut to warm applause from the audience, as did X-Factor UK stars 4Th Impact.
Things started kicking into high gear just as the sun kissed the proceedings goodbye, with the appearance of Up Dharma Down, arguably the most popular local band in the country today. The foursome of Armi Millare, Ean Mayor, Paul Yap and Carlos Tañada started their set (“All the Good Things”) at exactly 6:30 p.m., which was a near-miracle considering how festivals are so often plagued by delays. Big thumbs up to the Paradise folks for keeping things moving along and getting all the artists to stick to the schedule.
Up next was Austin Mahone, who had the tween-and-teen crowd scrambling toward the main stage. First gaining a following on YouTube, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter drew obvious comparisons to Justin Bieber with his song-and-dance act. There weren’t quite as many Mahone-ys (?) there that night, but that didn’t stop the artist from giving it his all. His oeuvre consists mostly of the baby-i-love-you-baby-i-need-you-type of pop fare, but you can’t deny the kid’s strong vocal pipes, and he busted out some moves like it was nobody’s business. There were those who clapped politely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked up a few new Pinoy fans that night.
Rudimental kept things going at the second stage, but I chose to enjoy his DJ set from the elevated VIP platform. A cool breeze replaced the searing heat, which was a relief, but it also carried the dust from the open grounds up and toward people’s bodies and faces. Similar to the Good Vybes Festival a month earlier (which was held in the same venue), a thin film of dust covered everyone by the end of the evening, but I’d take that any day over a mud slick had the heavens opened up and dumped rain on the venue. Thank god for small miracles.
By the time Wiz Khalifa went up onstage, audiences had converged back at the main stage and were primed for the night’s big guns. Wearing ripped-up jeans and a loose-fitting button-down that billowed in the breeze, the American rapper made his appearance holding what appeared to be a lit-up joint. Wiz is well-known for his fondness for all things weed (one of his best-known songs, “Young, Wild And Free” even extols the virtues of the marijuana-fueled, hedonistic lifestyle), but in a country that publicly frowns upon the use of illegal drugs (and last I checked marijuana is still illegal), one has to wonder what authorities had to say about that. From where I was standing though, it seemed people couldn’t care less; they were just singing along and basking in the haze of his high-five, feel-good songs.
Of course, the evening’s big story is Yeezus himself. One of the biggest music superstars on the planet, Kanye West is well-known even to non-fans as the man who has carved out a name (sometimes inadvertently) outside of the realm of his music. Having just released “The Life of Pablo,” his much-anticipated seventh album, he could have chosen to perform anywhere in the world, so the fact that organizers were able to lure him here to Manila, in an untested music festival, deserves recognition. If his presence here isn’t an indication that the country has now joined the ranks of the region’s must-visit places for international music acts, then I don’t know what is.
In an interview with one of the organizers, I was told that West would be performing with the same complicated lighting design that helped make his headlining performance at last year’s Glastonbury festival so memorable. As soon as Kanye walked out onstage just as the 375-bulb (I counted) light fixture descended from the rafters, I knew it was going to be quite a show.
West opened with “Ultralight Beam,” one of several songs he debuted live in Manila. Wearing a red shirt over a black wifebeater and a red cap emblazoned with “Pablo,” his swagger was unmistakable even with a bandana wrapped around the lower half of his face. All around me at the VIP area (which cost a cool P14,500 per), I could see that the most hardcore of fans wore an expression that could only be described as ecstasy on their faces.
While Wiz Khalifa was lighthearted and fun—a warm-up cocktail at the start of the evening—West was a stiff drink, all business. He powered through modern classics like “Stronger,” “Power” and “Black Skinhead.” Eventually he made his way to a medley of songs from The Life of Pablo, which he was performing live for the very first time, beginning with “Father Stretch My Hands Part 1” and “Pt.2.” During “Famous,” the song with the incendiary lyric, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous,” he stopped before getting to the end to deliver a spiel.
“In the spirit of Nina Simone—in the spirit of real artists—this is the song that broke the writer’s block for me,” he said. “It’s overwhelming for me to perform that song for the first time and for y’all to react to it in that way. That night, when I went onstage was the beginning of the end of my life. Lady Gaga canceled the tour the next day.” He was, of course, talking about the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when he infamously interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech onstage to say that Beyonce deserved the award more.
“You know the night I’m talking about, when I just said what everybody else was thinking,” he continued. “So if I get in trouble for saying the truth, what’s being said the rest of the time?” Audiences didn’t seem to mind that he interrupted himself mid-song to launch into a monologue. When he asked for permission to do the song again, they were only too willing to say okay.
West did “Waves,” another live debut, before pulling back to do the massive hit “Jesus Walks.” In many shows, especially those that are part of an artist’s worldwide tour, the numbers can seem too rehearsed, becoming a template which they repeat show after show, night after night. What’s special about West is his wild unpredictability. Similar to his set at Glastonbury, and many other times in the past, he had no qualms about stopping a song and doing it over, and signaling to his DJ/musical director to turn the music way down to let the audience sing the words back to him.
Almost any other artist who does that would get savagely ripped, but West had already won the crowd over just by being there, so whatever he chose to do, we all just stood there and let it happen, too mesmerized just to be in the presence of the self-proclaimed greatest musical artist of all time. When he launched into “All Falls Down,” and then into “Gold Digger,” a guy in front of me started going into spasms so severe I was afraid he would pass out. Everybody else was too into his or her own universe to care.
It’s not enough to say West killed it; he knocked out, bludgeoned and murdered the whole thing senseless. Whatever complaints attendees might lodge against the first Paradise International Music Festival, you can’t really argue against greatness.
After the amps fell silent and the bulbs were extinguished on West’s stage, some people flocked to the second stage to see the night’s last two acts, Afrojack and DJ Rivero, but those guys had their work cut out for them. Always, the danger of a mind-blowing act is following up with something even more out-of-this-world.
I can’t wait to find out what organizers have in store for us next year. —KG, GMA News
Paul John Caña is a magazine writer and live music geek. He is also co-founder of libreto.org
