Up-and-coming singer Geoff Mabasa on challenges of being a queer musician

M usic has been one of the many outlets in creativity and expression for the LGBTQ+ community. The recent celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Love Laban 2 Everyone!: Pride PH Festival 2024, had a concert to celebrate the community at the Quezon City Memorial Circle with a mix of artists that represented the community and others who are openly supportive of the community such as Bini, Denise Julia, Juan Karlos, Cup of Joe, Gloc-9 and drag queens such as Marina Summers. Even though the event had to be cut short due to bad weather, there was a visible improvement in the growing support for and openness to the LGBTQ+ community in our country.

Representation of the LGBTQ+ community in music was not common in earlier years. It has always been straight musicians acting as a voice for the community, inspired by their friends or family members’ experiences.

Rapper Gloc-9 has “Sirena,’’ a shining light on the issues and struggles the LGBTQ+ community faces and a very personal song for his son, who is part of the LGBTQ+ community. This is why he is more than open about being part of the Pride concert in support of his son.

Now, we’re starting to have openly queer artists such as Kio Priest who is openly gay; Denise Julia, who hinted that she is open to any gender and has written a song about her encounter with a woman who made her feel a type of love and affection she never experienced before; up-and-coming artist Geoff Mabasa is making his way back to the music scene with a goal of representing the community.

Mabasa shared his personal journey in the music industry and how he struggled in writing music as someone who was part of the LGBTQ+ community in his teenage years: “Noong college (back in college), in our songwriting courses, I would write music addressed to a ‘her,’ even though I had a boy in mind when I wrote these songs. It affected the way I wrote. I was always reserved, and I was afraid of slipping that people might find out I’m singing songs for boys. I always felt like it would not help me professionally if I wanted people to listen to me. It was only very recently that I decided to revisit the songs I wrote back then and change everything from the perspective of a gay man liking another boy.”

He added: “And even though right now I’ve decided to start again, I can say that I am much happier, prouder, and more excited to hear people sing my songs, using the pronouns I prefer to use. People are easy to dismiss others with pronouns, but you don’t know how much these ‘small things’ impact other people’s lives.”

Mabasa believes that representation of queer artists in the Filipino music scene has evolved over the years, saying, “The Filipino music scene is still in its early stages of representation but still more progressive than our neighbors. I know the Philippines is quite open with LGBTQ+ artists, however, I still feel like there’s an expectation to act a particular way when you’re an LGBTQ+ artist in this country.”

He pointed out that queer musicians are still a bit restricted when it comes to expressing themselves, but he’s happy with the growth of Filipino queer music artists who are breaking through the music scene like him and would love to see more in the future and would love to collaborate with some of them.

Mabasa is releasing a song, “Paramdam,” on 26 July. The song has themes of nostalgia that bring you back to a sound familiar during the 2010s. He calls “Paramdam” an open love letter to the straight boy he used to have a crush on in college.

Mabasa mentioned that he assembled a world-class team for the song, working with members of Southborder as well as one of the best young engineers in the country for “Paramdam.”