Fete Dela Wsk! is a week-long festival that features a sonic exhibition of some of the noted contemporary and experimental artists the world over.

The festival reflects a complex spectacle on art and post-music performances within the fields of innovative and contemporary music. And, for this year’s edition renamed as WSK!, talks and live performances from artists from Prague, Paris, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Manila are supported by an exhibition featuring sonic sculptures, audio-video works, and site-specific installation art by Tad Ermitano, Kawayan de Guia, and multi-awarded French duo HeHe to name a few.

 In what started as Fete Dela Wasaque in 2008, the festival, which was an obvious pun to a popular music festival held annually in Manila, came about when artist and festival curator-director Tengal (real name Earl Drilon), through his non-profit organization SABAW Art Media Kitchen, figured that there were not enough platforms in the Philippines for experimental music. Says Tengal, “Let’s just say it’s an itch on my brain and I need to scratch it.”

   
Manila Bulletin: You said Fete Dela WSK! is an opportunity to explode people’s misconception of contemporary music. First of all, how would you define contemporary music?

Tengal Drilon: That’s right. I would describe contemporary music as a foray of quotations from existing material from the past, and a perpetual remix. For me, it’s a mixture now, a kind of soup mix. What would be best is that people from various backgrounds come together, be open to each other, and what the festival could offer. You leave the debris of ideas outside the door.

MB: How did you get into experimental and noise music?
 I don’t know if answering ‘it happened naturally’ is the most appropriate answer. I do come from a family with a musical background, mom was a theater actress, pop and my aunt were opera singers, and my eldest brother was a professional musician. I don’t really think of reasons on why I continue pursuing music. I would say that there are conscious decisions as to why I love doing it, and there are also unconscious decisions as to why I can’t get rid of it. For some time, I was fascinated on how ‘glitches,’ some call it glitch music, of machines sound like. I would say I get inside machines and absorb the sounds produced by machine errors, sounds created by machines by mistake, and the unnatural sounds of what these machines should produce. I like the decay of things, especially, that of technology.

MB: Do you think that this kind of music represents who you are?
I think what only represents my personality in the music I make is that I constantly try to change how it sounds, the same way I try to change how I am. Maybe, there’s no real changes, some might argue it’s been the same, I would say it’s always transitory, in a perpetual transition.

MB: Do you think experimental music has a market in the country?
People here listen to either some American/UK sound, or a rehash of some American/UK sound, what’s also popular is this “return of 70s” rnb / funk /soul, some listen to strange world fusion sh*t that incorporates reggae, tribal drumming, and call it “island music.” I would say that it’s kind. Does experimental music have a market in the country? I would say that experimental music could grow if people would let their guard loose, leave their preconceived ideas behind, and just stare and listen at that “thing” happening. It affects us neurologically.

MB: Neurologically? How so?
I think these exploratory sounds could affect a person in a way that is, for the lack of better terms, spiritual. What I mean is that you get a natural high, a kind of direct connection to the sound you listen to, since it doesn’t resemble anything familiar, it doesn’t have the same canon as any language of music you’ve probably heard before.

MB: Why do you think should people be more open to such music?
It’s primarily made up of sound. It’s everywhere. Silence is artificial. Silence is created, incorporated into music for the purposes of realizing the contrast to this “always on” sound everywhere. Be open to it. Composers of this music investigate various things in these phenomena of sound and why or how these affect us in a particular way, individually and as a society.

MB: How do you suggest one should approach experimental and noise music?
TD: With an open ear, specifically with two open ears.