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“A unique and special moment”: Margins United is Europe’s first festival celebrating alternative ESEA culture

today26/09/2024 2

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What do club culture and dance music mean to you?

I never really fully got into anything growing up. I definitely tried a lot of things though – studied zoology and cybersecurity, played classical piano, tried every sport under the sun – and nothing was interesting enough for me to pursue for more than a couple of years. Then I started going out to clubs and got into dance music and it just clicked for me. It’s the only thing that’s managed to pique my interest for more than five years and now it’s been over a decade and I’m still just as invested as when I first got into it.

I love going to the club because it’s one of the only spaces where you can choose to be social, make friends with regulars that you see often and create a community, or just stand in a spot by yourself and enjoy the moment. I like the escapism aspect of it as well – at the rave, time almost doesn’t exist, you just tell yourself you need to leave eventually, but the blurry haze for a few hours is a nice escape from my day to day schedule.

Dance music is so diverse and constantly evolving that there is always something to uncover or new to discover. No matter how arduous the daily grind gets for me, clubs and dance music will always be a welcome distraction. I’m really glad I found club culture and dance music because I really did feel a bit lost for the majority of my life until then.

How do you, as Eastern Margins, hope to change the way that ESEA culture is viewed and recognised within the UK?

I would just like ESEA culture to be recognised more to be honest. There’s definitely some recognition already but given how deep, vast and diverse ESEA culture is, the current representation isn’t enough. Even as Eastern Margins, we are trying our best to tell as many stories that we can but with so many cultures to get through and platform, it’s a big task. We aren’t the first to platform ESEA culture and I hope we won’t be the last. Hopefully, we have inspired others to also do the same, not just in the UK but globally.

Eastern Margins was founded seven years ago, how has your collective evolved since then?

We have definitely evolved a lot over the last seven years, from one-off events to being a label, a radio show, organising international tours and now a festival, it has been a lot of growth. Even looking at my own skillset over the years, I started off helping out with creating a safer space for the events, giving tips on expanding our social media following as those were my main skills and now I’ve had to learn graphic design for content creation and studying the music industry so I can figure out how to manage a functioning label.

So yeah, although I was kind of annoyed the day I got told I had to download Slack (I hate having so many messaging apps on my phone), our evolution from one-off events to a being a fully functioning platform where we are working really hard to create something with longevity, is worth all the hours put in.

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What does the term ‘alternative’ culture mean to you?

I feel like a lot of people think Asian culture is music that 88rising puts out or movies like Crazy Rich Asians, which is definitely valid and much-needed representation among the mainstream arts, but what about the underground? I started out in music in the underground because I didn’t really vibe with what was out in the more mainstream branches of music, so I guess that’s what alternative culture means to me. Anything that doesn’t have a place or fit in the mainstream, the alternative is our home and community for that culture.

Why is it important and necessary to have a dedicated festival celebrating and promoting ESEA culture?

To answer this question bluntly, the fact that there hasn’t been a dedicated festival already celebrating and promoting ESEA culture is exactly why it’s important for us to do this. I touched on this earlier, but there’s so much to showcase when it comes to ESEA culture, a festival like Margins United is just the beginning, we need to do more.

There is such a wide diversity of music on offer at the festival, from drum ‘n’ bass to R&B to dream pop, what was the intention behind curating such a genre-bending line-up?

The intention behind such a diverse line-up is to showcase all the different branches of music ESEA artists are involved in. We are all doing so much and when you mention Asian music to people, not many people know how diverse it can be so that’s our main motivation behind such a varied line-up.

What needs to be done in the industry to ensure that there is better representation for East & South-East Asian musicians?

More support and funding. We couldn’t have done this festival without the funding from the UK Arts Council and given the increase in cost of living and the socio-economic crisis globally, it’s harder to be an artist these days so more funding is definitely needed. And with anything anyone ever does, support is always needed. Support from the ESEA community and outside the community is vital to keeping musicians going, whether that’s just streaming the music to buying tickets to shows, any support, no matter how big or small, is always needed.

What are your hopes and dreams for the future of Margins United?

I hope that there will be more events like Margins United to come. And given how busy I am trying to juggle my day job and working on Eastern Margins, I now dream of more advanced methods to organise budgets and release campaigns in spreadsheets to fully utilise all the limited time I have to work on everything so we can do more. More events, more releases and supporting more ESEA artists with their craft.

Written by: Tim Hopkins

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