Angelica Tolentino, aka Babay L. Angles, aka Bomba Brown, is a DJ from Olongapo, Philippines, but San Diego CA-based. She is the founder of Olongapo Disco and co-founder of The Shake It Show. She spins Soul-Funk and rare grooves from all over the world and she hosts the monthly shows at Half Moon Bk in Brooklyn-New York, plus a show at Orange Radio in Los Angeles-CA. She seeks to build community in a way that is deeply present, rested, and in wellness. Learn more about her in just 3 minutes below.

Welcome! A glass of?

Calamansi juice

Your first approach to Djing?

1993! I used to record songs from my tv onto cassette and create mixtapes and my own radio show as a kid growing up in Okinawa, Japan.  

Who are your current main influences?

I listen to a lot of music from my elders, my Dad, Ricardo Duero Tolentino. He loved James Brown and is from Olongapo, so my love of funk, OPM (Original Pinoy Music), and uncle. Music comes from him first.  I’d also say my dance communities usually guide my listening. I grew up in a lot of breaking, rocking, whacking, club cyphers so I am forever influenced by all the Djs. I grew up dancing to like Mane One, Skeme Richards, and Tito Vida. Most recently, I was learning Balinese movement in Ubud, so I’ve been listening to a lot of Gamelan, Indonesian Jazz, Funk, and Rock.  

7 or 12 inch?

I love albums, so 12 inch. But I’d like to build out my 45 collection.

Your top 3 Disco labels?

Sunshine, Casablanca, Salsoul.

Mountains or sea?

The sea!

What comes to your mind if I say Olongapo Disco?

Olongapo Disco is an ongoing autoethnographic performance ritual and sound archive of ancestral resilience and joy within diasporic BIPOC communities of Kumeyaay Territory. Through a series of workshops: Babay L. Angles asks artists to create work answering the following question: What are the ancestral joy and resilience technologies that we need to remember and create to survive and thrive? Our work honors and remembers our ancestors, chosen, biological, and the land.  We are creating a communal archive of joy technologies including funk, disco, fashion, dance, and environmental, political, social activism past, present and future. We generate artistic joy centered solutions to community problems within South East San Diego which are informed by our collective joy archive. This project heals intergenerational trauma as participants visually, sonically, and kinesthetically integrate historical experiences of joy and struggle. Despite centuries of systemic oppression through colonization, war, and militarism that our community has endured, our work builds an altar of resilience. This work honors and remembers my dad, Ricardo Duero Tolentino, and his Joy. We honor and remember the joy of our ancestors who created spaces for us to dream today. They knew in their sacrifices and their dreams that, WE ARE FREE. We choose to honor our ancestors through this work when we love life, don’t take things too seriously, and generously just LIVE with community.  Olongapo Disco is a place of freedom building. A place of remembering. The disco is where you let your worries go and you let yourself dream. You put on your best clothes and you know in that moment of a song, your body and your spirit is free and free to FLY. Covered in your ancestors’ Funk, you are it. You’re on a soul train to freedom and there’s no stopping you.  This project began in 2022 and is ongoing.

Your top 5 new releases ?

I’ll just list my top 5 new records/albums I’ve been listening to/playing:

- The Garage Years "Dara Puspita"

- D’Lloyd "Pop Vol. 9"

- Djuhana Satar, Hasjim Khan, Ellya M. Harris "Tetap Menanti"

- Aida Mustafa, Zaenal Combo "Libra Bintangku"

- Dakila "Dakila"

Your top 5 Disco Song releases

- Donna Summer "Love to Love You Baby"

- Ella Del Rosario "Shake It Baby"

- Joe Bataan "Sadie (She Smokes)"

- Diana Ross "The Boss"

- Quartz "Beyond the Clouds"

Another passion?

Surfing.

If you could teleport yourself for a few days…

In the present, I’d like to be back in Lombok on a boat back out to surf! In the past, Magsaysay Drive seeing all the club signs, rocking the best fit. And in the future, bottom of the sea in Siargao, swimming and chilling with all kinds of sea life, I’ve gained super breath holding skills. 

What makes you proud today?

I’m just grateful to be a woman listening to her heart, her ancestors, travelling, learning new things, listening to tunes, making friends.  I’m proud to be able to say yes. 

What job would you like to do if you weren’t a DJ?

If I wasn’t a DJ, I’d like to be a free diver, a mermaid, a marine biologist!  

Interviewed by DJ coshmar/Photo by Magdalena Ramirez.