Budots is the internet’s latest obsession and Tik Tok has made it happen for the Phillipino dance genre.
It’s gone viral almost 20 years after it was first invented.
Budots is the internet’s latest obsession and Tik Tok has made it happen for the Phillipino dance genre that was invented in a home cum internet café around 2008. It’s sexy, it’s freestyle and Gen Z is falling in lust with its crazy.
Budots builds on its 140 beat per minute foundation and is layered with sounds that its inventor first experimented with. There are sirens, whistles, bursts of laughter and chopped-up sounds that loop over rolling basslines.
It was created by DJ Love aka Sherwin Calumpang Tuna on the Philippines island of Mindanao. It was, at its genesis, a mash-up of noise that found its way to the dance floor.
It’s freestyle
And when you move to it, it’s freestyle. There are unchoreographed and exaggerated body rolls, swinging arms, bent knees and loads of seductive hip action.
There are no rules as to how you want to move your body and no pretence. This is why Gen Z loves it and across Instagram and Tik Tok users have been creating their own music and dancing to it as they wish.
The name budots comes from a local language called Visayan and means slacker. But nothing about the music is idle. It is relentless, it is playful and it compels movement.
So, rewind two decades. After DJ Love’s invention went clubbing, it hit the mainstream.
A local version of Big Brother saw a contestant freestyle dance to it on television and by 2012 prime time actuality programming started giving it oxygen. Politicians also discovered its power.
Rodrigo Duterte, then running for president of the Phillipines in 2015, used budots to connect with voters. Four years later, another politician used the beats for his senate campaign. But still, beyond the island nation’s borders, nobody had heard of budots at the time.
Gen Z and Tik Tok spread budots
Thanks to Gen Z the world eventually got introduced to budots. Thanks to the pandemic that fuelled TikTok’s endless dance trends, budots has become impossible to ignore.
Pundits said its messy, crazy and body flailing, uncoordinated style fits perfectly with Gen Z’s love of irony and authenticity. DJs overseas started incorporating budots into their sets, too. And now, it’s becoming a musical force to be reckoned with.
Fans of the genre said what makes budots irresistible is its freedom. It makes you dance whether you mean to or not. People have called it Gen Z rag-doll style for that very reason. Also, because of all the layers of real-world sounds on top of a beat and some sleet, its rawness feels like a physical and emotional release.
Music is the bedrock of fashion and budots fashion is as raggedy as the music itself. There are just no rules, only common denominators. Comfort, expression and the need to move is the bottom line.
T-shirts, jerseys, baggy shorts or pants and whatever else works for a night of dancing make up a style that’s as Gen Z in its casual and informal, but always personal, clobber form.
