From the photocopied zines and makeshift stages of the 1990s to the social media handles and online playlists of this generation, Naga’s underground has endured. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only translated from one form to the next.
There is something wonderfully contradictory about Bikolanoise Kolektib. Its aesthetic is a throwback to the independent music culture of the 1990s: photocopied zines, hand-drawn graphics, printed posters, and the unmistakable charm of doing things yourself. It has that distinct analogue vibe. Yet its soundscape is very much in the present, where instruments can be conveniently mixed and adjusted on a tablet, where studios are laptops in a bedroom, and a song has an immediate global audience with few taps on a smartphone.
It is an analogue sensibility operating in a digital landscape. The photocopied zine has found its way into the touchscreen era.
But there is the sense that Bikolanoise Kolektib is not just about staging a revival of an older underground culture. It is not nostalgia that fuels the movement. Through its platform, Lokal Orig, the collective is connecting different generations of musicians and making space for original music in a city whose cultural life has been in a state of closeted mutation alongside its expanding urban landscape. To understand what it is doing, however, it helps to turn the volume down for a moment and listen to the history behind the noise.
SOUND CHECK
Naga’s alternative music scene in the mid-to-late 1990s did not emerge in a vacuum. It arrived at a moment when Filipino alternative rock was breaking into the mainstream. Eraserheads, Rivermaya, The Youth, Yano, Teeth, and Wolfgang, were the low hanging fruits in a rally lush orchard of band music. The mainstream and the underground became both increasingly accessible, and possible through printed media, television, FM radio programming that suddenly slotted rock music into significant block times, and dial-up Internet. For young people, the dream was band or bust.
The conditions on the ground helped turn that inspiration into a local scene. School events, community gatherings and local festivals had to have bands for foundation celebrations, school activities, fundraising concerts, and other gatherings. Covered courts and school auditoriums became makeshift concert venues. Organizers needed performers; bands needed places to play; audiences wanted to hear live music. To hell with musicality. It was about the energy. And the cycle sustained itself.
Music discovery was also a different kind of experience. Before streaming services and algorithmic recommendations, finding new music meant listening to the radio, watching television, borrowing cassette tapes, radio recordings, browsing SongHits magazines, and asking friends what they were listening to. Cassette sleeves were just as important as the tape itself. Lyrics were misheard most of the time, but it did not really matter in the grander scheme of things. Discovering a band could feel like uncovering a secret. A borrowed album or a homemade demo might open an entirely new musical world.
And there was no shortage of worlds to explore. Grunge, punk, hardcore, heavy metal, death metal, Britpop, indie, alternative, and progressive rock could coexist in the same circle of friends. One could move from Nirvana to Metallica, The Cure to Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam to Blur. Gatekeeping was not an issue because genres did not really matter. The rebelliousness in the noise was the unifying element, particularly for young people who were finding ways to circumvent the norms imposed by a mostly conservative local culture. Musical identities were not yet neatly sorted into algorithmically assigned categories. The boundaries were porous, and curiosity often mattered more than allegiance.
Naga’s compact urban character made those connections easier. Musicians, audiences, organizers, and enthusiasts repeatedly crossed paths. Naga was the place to study, to seek gainful employment, to connect with urbanism without overcommitting to the dread vastness of Metro Manila. Band members moved between projects, friendships turned into collaborations, and people who met at one event would find themselves working together at another. The scene was held together less by a central institution than by a network of people who knew one another and kept things moving.
This was happening as Naga itself was changing. Its economy was becoming more dynamic, its civic and political life more engaged, and its connections to wider popular culture more immediate. Television and the arrival of the internet were opening windows beyond the familiar boundaries of a predominantly religious and conservative environment. The music scene became one expression of that broader urban transformation: a space where young people could test ideas, challenge conventions, and encounter ways of being that did not always fit the expectations around them.
The noise was never just about volume. It was about presence.
Rock music gave young people permission to be loud, irreverent, restless, and different. It offered a language for frustrations and aspirations that did not always have a place in more conventional spaces. Distorted guitars, pounding drums, feedback, and shouted vocals became more than musical devices. They were declarations that young people had something to say and pushed to be heard.
The scene also began finding ways to sound like itself. The BL@H, formed in 1996 by musicians from different local bands, was among the acts that demonstrated how alternative rock could accommodate Bikol material and local identity. The point was not to imitate what was happening elsewhere, but to use the energy of a wider musical movement to develop something rooted in the local experience and language.
Naga’s underground was part of the city’s encounter with modernity. It was a cacophony of voices, influences, and ideas, sometimes harmonious and often not. That was precisely its value.
GAIN UP
By the mid-2000s, the momentum of the earlier band scene had shifted into another gear. Naga was developing a more pronounced nightlife culture. Traditional downtown dives were expanding, while Magsaysay Avenue was becoming a growing destination for bars and after-dark entertainment.
The City slept less and less, and noise was needed to keep one awake and on pace.
The city’s musical life found another important gathering point in the Wharf Galley scene. Across two locations, beginning sometime in the mid-2000s, Wharf Galley became a venue for up-and-coming bands from across the Bikol Region. But its significance went beyond giving musicians a place to perform.
It also welcomed poets and other artists, creating opportunities for collaborations and encounters across creative disciplines. Music could meet spoken word; musicians could connect with visual artists; different forms of expression could share the same space. The venue became a meeting point for people who might otherwise have occupied separate creative circles.
That mattered. A music scene needs more than bands and audiences. It needs places where people can meet, exchange ideas, experiment, and discover what they can make together. This era helped broaden the possibilities of Naga’s creative community.
The City’s nightlife boom did not simply provide more places to drink or hear live music. It gave the local scene another kind of infrastructure built around gathering, collaboration, and the possibility of creative crossover.
RECONFIGURING THE RIG
As technology became more accessible and personal, the mechanics of making music began to change. The garage-band impulse never really disappeared; it simply acquired new equipment.
The laptop gradually became the default home studio: a place to write, record, arrange, mix, and produce music. Affordable software and increasingly capable devices made it possible for artists to take on tasks that once required access to dedicated studios and specialized equipment. Smartphones extended that possibility further, becoming convenient workstations for recording, editing, publishing, and promoting music.
The artist’s role expanded. Musicians were no longer only expected to write songs and perform them. Increasingly, they could also produce their own recordings, package their releases, manage their online presence, and find audiences beyond their immediate communities. The same person could be songwriter, performer, producer, distributor, and marketer.
This was another democratization of music-making. The barriers to entry were changing, and some of the traditional gatekeepers were becoming less indispensable. A musician did not necessarily need a record label, a major studio, or an established industry connection to begin creating and releasing original work.
But easier access to tools did not automatically guarantee an audience. Digital platforms made distribution possible, but they could not replace the experience of hearing music together, discovering a band in a live setting, or building relationships around a shared creative space. Technology could help an artist reach the world; a local scene could help that artist find a community.
The challenge had shifted. It was no longer only about getting the equipment to make music. It was also about finding ways to bring people together around the music being made.
ANALOGUE HEART, DIGITAL HANDS
This is where Bikolanoise Kolektib seems to anchor its particular character. It is a platform that is still in the process of finding its own tempo. But there are characteristics that are quite evident. Its analogue-inspired visual language is not an exercise in nostalgia, nor is it a rejection of contemporary technology. It draws from the independent spirit of an earlier generation while using the tools and possibilities available today.
The zines, hand-drawn graphics, and printed posters recall a time when independent music culture depended heavily on personal initiative. You made the publication, copied it, distributed it, put up the posters, organized the gig, and persuaded people to show up. The process was imperfect, sometimes improvised, but it belonged to the people doing the work.
That spirit remains relevant even when the tools have changed. A tablet can now take the place of several pieces of analogue equipment. A laptop can become a recording studio. A smartphone can serve as a production tool and a direct line to listeners. But the underlying principle is familiar: do not wait for someone else to create the conditions you need. Make them yourself.
Bikolanoise brings that do-it-yourself attitude into the present. It recognizes that independent music culture is not defined by a particular decade, instrument, or recording format. It is defined by creative agency—the willingness to create, organize, produce, distribute, promote, and build something without waiting for permission. The people behind it are people with day jobs, night shifts, businesses to run, and families to provide for. But it is that creative agency that prods them forward.
Its visual and musical identity aspires to be a bridge between eras. It acknowledges the people who helped establish Naga’s underground while making room for musicians whose influences, methods, and sounds may be entirely different.
CURATING THE MIXTAPE
The people who helped build Naga’s earlier underground have since moved on to the more demanding forms of hardcore genres: family, livelihood, health, bills, a tanking economy, and political uncertainity. Guitars have been put away, amplifiers unplugged, rehearsal spaces closed, and some musicians have moved elsewhere. The years have a way of turning down the volume of things.
But the impulse that animated that earlier scene has not disappeared. And it does not have to remain in the hands of the people who first carried it.
Listening to the two shows of Bikolanoise Kolektib establishes the expectation that the task is not to reclaim the stage for the old guard. It is to keep the stage available. The collective’s platform, Lokal Orig, is intended for local acts to have another place to present original material and encounter an audience. Its first two installments, held in August and October, have brought together seasoned musicians—the so-called tito rockers—and younger acts exploring new soundscapes, textures, and drumbeats. Lokal Orig delivered a platter that had everything and more—from classic muted chugs to pop-leaning ear candy to soul-piercing gutturals and to fuzzy and gliding ambients. A third installment is slated for December.
That combination is more than a nostalgic reunion or a showcase of emerging talent. The mixtape is in the present, whatever it looks like at the moment. It puts different musical experiences in the same room. The madness is the method. Older musicians bring histories, influences, stories, and memories of how the scene took shape. Younger artists bring new sensibilities, a fresh and raw energy, refreshingly unfamiliar creative pathways and the willingness to push into territories that may not have existed when the earlier generation was starting out.
Neither generation needs to become the measuring stick for the other. The younger acts should not be expected to reproduce the sound of the 1990s, just as older musicians should not be asked to prove their relevance by chasing every new trend. The value lies in the exchange—in hearing how different generations interpret, challenge, and expand the idea of original music.
It isn’t simply passing the torch. It’s expanding platforms and stages. The more, the messier. But isn’t that really the vibe that sustains the youthfulness in all of us?
And the best tribute younger musicians can pay to the architects of the earlier underground may be to make music those architects would not entirely understand. Bend genres. cross-pollinate spheres of influences. Experiment with textures and experiences. Find new territories of art.
NO SINGLE FREQUENCY
There is a larger idea behind this kind of independent cultural activity. A healthy creative scene thrives when it is not fettered to a single venue, organization, collective, or platform. It should have many points of entry, many places to gather, and many ways for artists to find one another and reach an audience.
This is close to what philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe through the idea of the rhizome: a network that grows through multiple connections rather than from one central trunk. Applied to culture, it suggests a scene that is decentralized, heterogeneous, and constantly changing. Connections form, dissolve, and reappear. No single node owns the whole network.
For Naga City, that is a useful way to imagine what its creative future could look like. Bikolanoise Kolektib need not become the definitive platform for local music. It can be one among many. Other collectives, independent organizers, venues, publications, and advocates should be able to emerge, develop their own identities, and create their own spaces. More platforms mean more opportunities for artists and audiences alike.
The objective isn’t to build a bigger center. The task is to make the creative process less dependent on one.
This becomes especially meaningful as Naga moves toward a Highly Urbanized City status. Urbanization is often measured through infrastructure, investment, commerce, population, and the capacity of local institutions. Those things matter. But a city aspiring to become highly urbanized should also aspire to become highly pluralistic.
A truly urban culture is not one that merely looks modern. It is one that allows people to participate in making it modern. It gives different communities room to express themselves, welcomes creative experimentation, and accepts that a lively cultural environment will sometimes be messy, contradictory, and uncomfortable. Difference should not be treated as a problem to be managed away. It can be a source of energy.
The music scene is one measure of that openness. Its beating heart is not one particular sound, nor one generation, nor one organization. It is the sheer number of sounds it allows to exist and the connections that happen when those sounds meet.
Bikolanoise Kolektib and its Lokal Orig platform is part of that cultural work. The staging does not worry about bringing back a lost golden age. From the lineup, it can be gleaned that it cares not in crafting the final formula for Naga’s music culture. Make your own material, and test it before an audience. Simple. Straightforward.
So let a hundred platforms bloom. Let different generations share plural stages. Let artists make music that do not always fit neatly into a category or a social expectation. Let the City hear all of it.
The header photo shows the crew and organizers of Bikolanoise Kolektib. Click to follow Bikolanoise Kolektib on FB.
About the author:
DENNIS B. GONZAGA: Writer, critic, and academician. Former Humanities faculty at Ateneo de Naga University. Curator of The 416 Art Space in Naga City. Advocate for local culture. AB Political Science graduate, Ateneo de Naga University; MA Asian Studies graduate , University of the Philippines. Public Information Officer, Naga City People’s Council.