Oh, Flamingo!, Ena Mori, The Itchyworms, and more to represent the Philippines in AXEAN Festival 2023

Six (6) Filipino music acts will be performing at this year’s AXEAN Festival, Southeast Asia’s premier collaborative showcase festival happening in Singapore on October 28 to 29 at Goodman Arts Centre in Singapore!

Filipino alt-rock icons The Itchyworms and critically acclaimed band Oh, Flamingo! will be joining Ena Mori, Alisson Shore, obese.dogma777 and LONER as the country’s representative to the second edition of the music festival.

Formerly known as ASEAN Music Showcase Festival, the newly rebranded AXEAN Festival will feature and attract networking opportunities with notable international talent buyers from Asia and the rest of the world.

Birthed in 2020 as a virtual music showcase festival, AXEAN Festival launched into the “real world” in 2022 and became an internationally recognized platform, bringing regional artists to the global music stage. With the announcement of the 2023 iteration of the festival, the organisers are taking the opportunity to re-introduce the festival with its new name – AXEAN Festival.

Festival co-founder Piyapong ‘Py’ Muenprasertdee explains, "Despite our different languages and customs, Southeast Asia is a region rich with historical heritage and shared cultures and identities. Colloquially, the term '"ASEAN" (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is often used interchangeably with "Southeast Asia" due to reasons including the spoken language of its people, signifying the sense of unity we have as a region. After 3 successful editions, we want to make a statement of our commitment to elevate Southeast Asian music onto the world stage by renaming our event 'AXEAN Festival', with an 'X' symbolising our core values of collaboration and crossing borders, whether physical, lingual or cultural, while also inviting artists and fans from all corners of the world to celebrate and share their music with us!"

This first wave of artists performing this year is headlined by Shye, Reality Club, The Itchyworms, KIKI, and Oh Flamingo!. The event will also host performances from Singaporean pop artist Jean Seizure, Thai R&B artist Flower.far, Indonesian singer-songwriter TANAYU, and many more exciting artists.

AXEAN Festival is Southeast Asia’s first intraregional music showcase festival, an annual event that springboards Southeast Asian music onto the world stage held physically in Singapore with 2 main elements: a music showcase festival and business networking events.

Its inaugural edition was organized by 5 participating countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It was held virtually via live video streaming of pre-recorded performances in September 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as an initiative to help regional artists stay connected with their fanbase and gain international fans. The goal was to encourage artists and their teams to look beyond the pandemic and prepare for future export and international touring opportunities by being performance-ready and meeting with music business professionals from all over the world.

The second edition was again organized online in 2021, but joined by 2 additional countries: Cambodia and Vietnam. In 2022, the third edition was its first live edition, held in Singapore and jointly organized by the 7 countries with Laos added to its upcoming 2023 edition.

The Wave 1 lineup of artists performing at AXEAN Festival 2023 in alphabetical order is as follows: