A chill-out stop featuring acoustic guitar-playing singers with throwback repertoire of easy-listening tunes is appropriately called a folk bar. That is exactly what you get upon dining in at My Bro’s Mustache, which you can find at the ground floor of Hive Hotel in Scout Tuason corner Madrinian Streets, South Triangle, Quezon City.
Folk music, for one, pertains to a genre embracing the now-classics recorded basically with acoustic guitar accompaniment. These masterpieces from the last decades of the 20th century were generally penned perhaps “under the pale moonlight” and typically without the aid of highly advanced equipment nor help from various apps.
Thus, the struggles of folk artists may be weighted as more in touch with basic humanity. Whereas some musicians require state-of-the-art gadgets and party lights. Folk singers only crave for properly tuned guitars along with some sense of real tranquility.
If you’re the type who’d rather see cover artists and select hitmakers inclined to the delicate touch of folk music, then this place is certainly designed for you.
Yet it should sound unfair to categorize its crowd as purely coming from Generation X or Baby Boomers. There are millennials who are old souls themselves. And of course, a handful of Gen Zs is understandably attached to the folk genre for a reason or two.
“Malaking bagay na makasama sa roster of artists highly regarded in the music scene,” said acclaimed tunesmith Toto Sorioso who is one of My Bro’s regular performers for the more than ten years now. He sings on Tuesday nights.
The artist lineup he is referring to includes the likes of Lolita Carbon, Mon Espia, Noel Cabangon, and even Pinoy rocker Wally Gonzalez.
Popular to people whose musical taste propelled international artists like Jim Croce, Tracy Chapman, and Simon & Garfunkel to stratospheric glory, folk music eventually blossomed in this country thanks to the voices and songwriting brilliance of Freddie Aguilar, Florante, and a few more in such elite club.
Hanging out in My Bro’s Mustache, with its feel-good mood-setting interior design and a regular patron of careerists and music aficionados, is an experience combining good music and food, capped off by below-zero beer the bar is fairly associated with. It’s a place to unwind and go home charged, not to nurse bad vibes.
“We seek to continue the bar’s philosophy of providing a quirky but soulful haven for those who want to travel back to a familiar past with live entertainment,” implies an insider from My Bro’s. The owner apparently is an audiophile with a music room of his own and who champions such kind of music and the artists digging it.
Hive Hotel & Convention Place, its creation often directed back to My Bro’s Mustache’s famed site, has also blended with folk music’s wink to nature. Its mission partly “revolves around environment protection and with guest rooms depicting living spaces that are compact, comfortable, and complete.”
“Comfort zone ko ang folk songs,” added Toto.
It’s essentially the same take for those who love listening to folk.