AGAINST THE CURRENT

Zamboanga's DJ MEDMESSIAH is pioneering Mindanaoan voices in hip hop. 

- SOFIA GUANZON

MINDANAO RESTS ON THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO OFF SOUTHWESTERN PHILIPPINES, cocooned by the Celebes and Sulu seas. The island chain comprises a serpentine arc around the country's southernmost tip and is home to the 13 Muslim-majority ethnolinguistic Austronesian group known as the Bangsamoro or the Moro people.

While the Moro people are dispersed across the entirety of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago in particular is the ancestral domain of the Tausug, whose name means "people of the current." The transitory nature of being a culture at the mercy of the seas lends a sense of determinism to the Tausug people. At least that much is clear in veteran producer, rapper, and founder of music collective and independent label Morobeats, DJ Medmessiah.

"In Mindanao, by heart, we believe we are Moros, and we are all just Filipinos on paper," he says. "We have our pride of representing Mindanao. But at the end of the day, our goal is to be understood. To present different people, different races, and different tribes." Born in Algeria to a Tausug-Maguindanaon father and a Moroccan mother, DJ Medmessiah, or Mohammed Bansil,

spent his first three years in France before settling in Pagadian, Zamboanga del Sur. Growing up in that city, Mohammed was exposed to the innumerable ways one could tell a story, and how one could hold an audience's attention from an early age.

After starting out as a young breakdancer in the 1990s, he gained interest in learning how to DJ after watching Disco Mix Club (DMC) competitions.

These are largely considered as an institution for serving as a platform wherein DJs battled for legitimacy.

"I said to myself, I wanted to be like those guys. Then I started practicing in a club in Zamboanga City," he recalls. After practicing on his own and learning from peers, he visited Manila. His real hip-hop education ensued in the now-defunct club of Heartbeat Disco on Quezon Avenue.