By F. Maria Regalado
The Sleeping Boy Collective is a Manila-based network of artists, musicians, and promoters who organize everything from dive bar shows to major events for touring musicians in and around the SEA region. That may sound like a lot now, but we’d like to tell you a little more about how and why we started.
Our roots ultimately trace back to a punk kid with a cat and a heart condition.
In 2014, our friend Raffy Mapa passed away due to cardiovascular complications. He was a beautiful soul who played in bands with us, made art, took photos, and put shows up with our collective’s future members. We were passionate about many of the same things, and his loss came at a time where we were all individually distanced/not entirely involved in music or the hardcore scene. It was a sad, but serendipitous thing where many of the people involved with the Philippines’ early emoviolence community just happened to be based in Metro Manila.
A number of us reconnected at Raffy’s wake, and we decided to try and get something going while we are all still here. Like, we would all still be working our day jobs, but we did not want to grapple with the idea of wasted potential due to our own inaction at the time. At that point, we saw that it was as good a time as any to start putting up the shows we always wanted to be part of—to be part of the pan-Asian touring network, and to bring our favorite post-hardcore/emoviolence bands over whenever we can.
Years on, we managed to make true on our commitment to these shows, bringing bands like Hierophant, Birds in Row, Full of Hell, Dangers, The Saddest Landscape, Turnover, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Nothing to Manila, among many others.
We have always strived for memorable shows, but on top of that we feel the need to make these experiences meaningful as well. From time to time, we’d run donation drives or put together benefit shows for displaced indigenous people, LGBT homelessness, gender justice, and most recently, crucial services for people’s pets.
In anticipation of the Manila leg of Counterparts and Stray From The Path’s Southeast Asia tour, we are putting up a pre-show. The catch? It’s also a benefit show for a local animal rescue group.
Raffy, apart from being a creative force, also loved cats.
Most of us in the collective have deep, loving relationships with our pets, so it was an easy decision to get Save Animals of Love and Light (Save ALL) on board. The group actively rescues and cares for abandoned, abused, and neglected cats and dogs. As people who live with adopted and rescued strays, this means a lot to us.
The Counterparts and Stray From The Path pre-show is at Mow’s Bar, 20 Matalino Street, Sikatuna Village, Quezon City this March 24.
Inspired by the two bands’ take on melodic and groove-based metalcore, we are pre-gaming hard with bands like Cadenzabler, Call From Home, Equation Crisis, Life Lost, Modern Day Collapse, Palepaths, Stillife, TNG, and Value Lasts.
Bands start at 7 p.m., and there’s a P150 door charge. You get a free drink though! Oh, and ticket holders for the Counterparts and Stray From The Path show get in for free.
Catch us.