Dilaw: Filipino six-piece invite you into their free-spirited universe

In 2019, two Baguio locals – a hip-hop-loving choir boy from Bengao and a musician who quit working abroad and went home to Lower Dagsian – decided to make music as the band Dilaw. They put out their songs by playing bar gigs and busking wherever they could around Baguio City.

These days, vocalist Dilaw Obero and guitarist Vie Dela Rosa are finding it a little challenging to go busking. For one, Dilaw are now a six-piece band. The NME 100 alums turned heads last year with rap-indebted songs loaded with social commentary (‘3019’, ‘Kaloy’).

But in 2023, they’re practically unmissable, thanks to their sharply detailed ballad on yearning, ‘Uhaw’, and its more enthusiastically received, sped-up version, ’Uhaw (Tayong Lahat)’. In the span of four months since its December release, the latter song has logged 23million plays on Spotify, peaking at the top spot of the platform’s Viral 50 Philippine playlist, as well as YouTube and Apple Music’s Philippine charts.

“We drink, and we write songs. We don’t like to overcomplicate things”

The numbers continue to mount even after Dilaw celebrated the song’s staggering success by playing a show in Baguio City called “Thirst Giving Party” (“uhaw” being Filipino for thirst). Puns aside, there’s a lot to unpack with Dilaw. But when they hop into a call with NME, huddled together in the empty function room of a Baguio hotel, they tell us that despite the unexpected and overwhelming turn of events – overanalysing it just isn’t their style.

“We don’t want to lose our heads so we’re chilling, but at the same time, we have to keep moving,” Obero says in English and Filipino, sitting between his bandmates. He had swanned into the room half an hour into the interview, zipped up in a snug yellow hoodie – the very embodiment of chilling.

“Sorry I’m late, that’s just me being Dilaw,” he says. His bandmates have creatively poked fun at their frontman’s notorious tardiness, but all nod in agreement when Obero states that they’re each other’s support system when the pressures of the job set in. “We drink, and we write songs. We don’t like to overcomplicate things,” he says.

Dilaw the band are now rounded up by siblings Leon and En Altomonte on guitars and keys, Vie’s brother Wayne Dela Rosa on bass, and Tobi Samson on drums. They had already been playing together whenever Obero and Vie’s gigs called for a full band, and each member knew what a Dilaw song needed, so the transition to a six-piece felt very natural. “We all decided to just go with it, and it was all super chill,” Vie says.

“Chill” is a word that gets thrown out a lot throughout the band’s chat with NME, and it’s also a disposition that the members share in varying degrees. They pepper their answers with humour and self-effacing talk, call each other out (or themselves) midway through a point, and shriek in unison at topics they find tease-worthy, like love and boyfriends. There are also the quick, chatty volleys. Drummer Tobi, a transplant from Nigeria who also briefly lived in Manila, raves about how much “nicer everyone in Baguio is” when Vie interjects: “But you haven’t met my family yet.” The room erupts with laughter.

Onstage though, things are less laidback and a lot more intense. “When we show up to play, we don’t do things half-assed,” Obero says. Vie admits that he still vomits up a storm pre-gig because of nerves (“Nasusuka ako sa sobrang kaba,” he says). But the jitters die down as soon they play their go-to opener ‘Maskara’ – a crowd-working moody rock number with thumping drums and squealing guitars. “It’s the most difficult song to play for me, but it’s what gets my adrenaline pumping,” Vie says.

It’s also one of six tracks in their new EP ‘Sansinukob’ where Obero gets to flaunt his elastic vocal range. He flits from spitting angry bars in ‘3019’, ‘Kaloy’ and ‘Maskara’ to belting and trilling in both versions of ‘Uhaw’ and ‘Sansinukob’ to letting rip a falsetto and theatrical growl across every other song on the record. “Sometimes I surprise even myself,” Obero says. “It’s an exorcism!”

“We want to be known as the band Dilaw, not the group who sang ‘Uhaw’”

Things tend to get rowdy when Dilaw play live – the band mess around with time signatures and change up song arrangements, one time turning ‘Uhaw’ into a punk-rock song in its outro. But Vie is surprised at how their frontman can bound across the stage with tireless energy and still be able to hold a tune. “The texture of his voice doesn’t get shaky. He can let rip bars so clean and clearly, sometimes without coming up for air,” Vie says. “I don’t know how and where he breathes. Maybe through his ears?”

Obero meanwhile, says he gets personal satisfaction from seeing the varying reactions of audiences as they shift from playing loud to soft and jumping from political tracks to love songs. It’s what they pride themselves on being able to do in the diverse textures, sounds, and themes of ‘Sansinukob’, which is a literary Filipino word for “universe.”

“It’s like a plea to the universe, here’s what we have to offer it,” Vie says. “We’re putting out different takes on what makes up our universe – there’s a take on governments, there’s a take on interpersonal shit and your inner self, there’s a take on love because that’s universal. We’re trying to make sense of it all.”

As Dilaw try to make sense of their music moving forward there’s another plea they bring up: “We want people to hear that we have so much more to say. We’re not just all about love,” Vie says. His fellow axeman, Leon adds: “We want to be known as the band Dilaw, not the group who sang ‘Uhaw’.”

Dilaw’s ‘Sansinukob’ EP is out now via Warner Music Philippines

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