Kampong Boogie: Open Selections, Close Community

There is always a certain magic at Kampong Boogie parties (Credit: Mark Lewis Tan)

You might’ve experienced it before. A groovy choon comes on, you’re surrounded by harmonious strangers on the dancefloor, and the vibes are trickling through every synapse of your brain.

Sounds familiar? Then you’re likely no stranger to the community spirit of music, and how a party can make you feel right at home. Pushing this belief with humility and fortitude is a party series that kick-started back in 2015, and it’s been winning the hearts of punters and DJs with its distinctive, all-inclusive modus operandi. This is the story of the Kampong Boogie phenomenon.

Walking down the streets of Little India, I stumble upon a shophouse restaurant called Sideways, known for its Mediterranean cuisine. Past the cosy, warm-hued ambience and into a brick-walled side room that also doubles up as an art gallery, I meet emcee Vijay Singh (AKA MC SWTLKR) and promoter Meza as they’re prepping the venue for yet another instalment of Kampong Boogie.

The time when Kampong Boogie took over a Mediterranean restaurant in Little India (Credit: Mark Lewis Tan)

Now you’re probably thinking, “I never expected to find a rave in a hidden room of a Mediterranean restaurant in Little India”. Yet, it is this attribute of Kampong Boogie that makes this series so darn thrilling.

If you’ve partied enough in Singapore, you might find it to be somewhat predictable as you hit the usual nightspots, especially if you’re looking for non-commercial tunage. Kampong Boogie monkey-wrenches this rut by adopting a nomadic formula, one that hijacks different venues after office hours and turns them into a playground for its floor-friendly shenanigans.

Vijay’s thoughts on genre diversity at a party

“Kampong Boogie has an interest in places that are a bit more unconventional. We’re trying to pop up in different, off-key places,” Vijay remarks. “It’s okay if spaces are not so perfect. Sometimes, there’s no air-conditioner, or the flush doesn’t work. Kampong Boogie is just more organic that way. It’s not manufactured in the way the club system does it.”

Potato Head Singapore, Koi and OverEasy are just some of the habitats that have popped up on the Kampong Boogie radar in past renditions. One locale in particular, however, played a pivotal role in cementing the party’s legacy, and that was The Great Escape when it still occupied the roof of Golden Mile Tower.

Despite launching in 2015, Kampong Boogie only moved to The Great Escape in early 2017 as a “resurrection” of sorts, according to Meza, on the eve of National Day. Following that, the carpark-adjacent rooftop venue would often host these sweaty, nimble shindigs that put out nothing but mint vibes and an unpredictable yet wholesome soundtrack.

In one night, you could be jiving to disco in one hour, slamming against hip-hop beats in another, and skanking to drum & bass for the home stretch. Vijay elaborates, “The Kampong Boogie format is structured in that very eclectic sense. There’s no repetition of one genre. I see an issue with guys who do just one genre all night. It’s like if I tell you to eat chicken rice Mondays to Fridays. There’s more to life. There’s a lot of music out there. There’s no excuse to not be listening to 10 different genres of music.”

It is this all-encompassing ethos of Kampong Boogie that has not only given punters reason to rejoice, but also local selectors who play at their shows – from veterans like Ramesh and KFC, to scene-shakers like A/K/A Sounds and Intriguant. “DJs who come play for these shows really enjoy it,” Vijay adds. “When they play in one of those big clubs, they get pigeonholed into 125bpm and above, or play techno all night, for example. Sometimes, there’s even performance anxiety to cater to that crowd or venue. In the Kampong Boogie atmosphere, that kind of thing is thrown out of the window.”

You’ll often find all-star lineups on the decks of Kampong Boogie (Credit: Kampong Boogie Facebook page)

Unforgivably open-format in the non-commercial sense, Kampong Boogie stands out from the scene. But before it earned its stripes, the series was merely a fantasy of promoter, Meza, who’d been curating events in the scene since 2011.

“I’d always been a small-time promoter, and my parties were always hit-and-miss,” Meza reveals. From running networking parties to helping start the Gimme Shelter series at the now-defunct Koi at Club Street, Meza remains modest in his party-launching repertoire, even in spite of the success of Kampong Boogie.

“I used to do daytime parties called Field Vibes at Goodman Arts Centre, and that lasted almost three years,” Meza continues. “One day in 2014, I heard Vijay emcee, and that’s when I realised that I wanted parties with a human element.”

With that, Meza hit the nail on the head. The emcee element has indeed become yet another calling card of Kampong Boogie’s identity, and Vijay owns this with suavity and swagger. Fronting punk and hardcore bands in his youth and later emceeing in the early noughties in the drum & bass scene, Vijay is effortlessly eloquent when it comes to the microphone, and it shows from the love the crowd gives back at Kampong Boogie bashes.

“As an emcee, I bridge the genres and encourage people to get into the music. Sometimes, I’m saying stuff like an announcer. Sometimes, I’m emceeing like a rapper or a raggamuffin. Or sometimes, I even sing and play with effects. At the end of the day, it’s really all about vibrations. The emcee’s role is to soak up all those vibes and send the energy back to the crowd,” Vijay explains his multi-layered approach.

But more importantly, aside from the open-format soundtrack, dingy venues and emceeing flair, Kampong Boogie is all about building a culture for the community – a “kampong spirit”, if you will.

Kampong Boogie has even taken over Intermission Bar, a waterhole outside indie cinema, The Projector (Credit: Mark Lewis Tan)

“The kampong is a village where people come together and things happen organically,” Vijay affirms. “You don’t get that sort of thing with the clubs. The clubs have become these capitalist machines that crank a lot of money every night. There’s very little soul in that.”

“I think what has happened over the years is there has been some sort of disconnect between the ground-up and top-down initiatives. In the ’90s, there were a lot more ground-up initiatives where you had a lot of crews and organisations who’d get together to do events and parties. But lately, there’s been a shift towards this top-down model where you have more fancy clubs with big money booking DJs and trying to artificially call it ‘culture’, when it’s really not.”

Culture, like most good things, has to happen organically, and Kampong Boogie does this with plenty of passion. Away from the pizazz of clubs and commercial competition, Kampong Boogie parties have become a place of solace for those simply yearning for a fuss-free, good-natured fiesta.

“That’s the magic of Kampong Boogie. It’s very lepak, bro,” quips Meza.

For more information on Kampong Boogie, follow their official website.