Algerian-born hip-hop producer gives voice to Philippines’ Muslim south

Jeddah - Yasmine El Tohamy - MANILA: With a roster of young artists under his care, Mohammed Bansil wears several hats as a businessman, producer, and mentor to Filipino hip-hop talent — all of them combining into one main goal: giving voice to the Moro people and their narratives of the Philippines’ Muslim south.

Known as DJ Medmessiah, Bansil is the founder of Morobeats, the independent record label and musical collective, which also features his daughters, the new sensations on the Philippine hip-hop scene, Miss A and Fateeha.

The projects and collaborations Morobeats engages in get millions of views on Netflix, Spotify, or YouTube, but despite that, they do not comply with the hip-hop mainstream in which the genre is flooded with themes involving money and urban gangs.

“It’s fake. In this era, everyone is talking about how rich they are, how good or gangster they are, how aggressive they are. And for me, coming from Mindanao, it’s really corny,” Bansil told Arab News.

“I want something that has more substance.”

Morobeats’ distinctive sound and lyrics combine both hip-hop and influences from indigenous cultures of the Sulu and Mindanao islands in the southern Philippines — home to over a dozen Muslim-majority ethnolinguistic groups known as the Moro people. 

The music is heavy on the kulintang — the ancient gong and drum ensemble traditionally used in the region — and the rap verses are in Tausug and Chavacano, the local languages spoken in Mindanao’s Zamboanga Peninsula.

One of the viral songs, “Hunghang,” talks about greed, empty promises and not being fooled by propaganda.

“The only thing that it took was to have a good melody. And then you have 15 million people or 20 to 25 million that heard that music,” Bansil said.

But reaching such numbers cost him years of struggle and self-determination.

Born in Algeria to a Filipino Tausug father and a Moroccan Algerian mother, he spent his childhood in France and then in the Muslim enclave of Maharlika village in Taguig, east of Metro Manila.

“The people that live there contribute to the Moro culture … you have people from the culture who pioneered the kulintangs and the Moro dances … we were watching Muslim dances, chants and all that,” Bansil said.

When his father was offered a job as a Shariah court judge, the family settled in Pagadian City, in Zamboanga, the very center of Moro Muslim culture and a region with a history of separatist violence.

This was where Bansil’s inclination for hip-hop came to the fore. He became a competitive drummer for his school’s drum and bugle band in Pagadian, an experience that he credits as the foundation for his beat-making.

He learned to rap in Zamboanga City, where the family moved in 1992 after his father’s death. As his mother ran a business selling textiles and merchandise, at the age of 15 he started to work as an MC at the city’s first club. There he would meet DJ Sonny of Mastaplann, a duo that ruled Filipino hip-hop in the 1990s.

When DJ Sonny told him to travel to Manila, Bansil packed his bags and flew there to hone his skills in rapping and producing music. He started developing his signature sound there, drawing from his percussive background and Zamboanga and Mindanao’s indigenous beats.

He struggled to break into Manila’s commercial music scene, as record companies considered his kulintang-heavy tracks and Tausug rap as good, but not sellable. Eventually he landed a record deal with a label that wanted him to do commercially viable reggaeton music, and he ended up producing a radio hit that even landed on one of the Philippines’ most popular noontime shows.

“But the thing was, that was not really the thing that I wanted to do, that kind of music. But I did that for survival,” he said. “Of course, that was 2004 (and) nobody would listen to Tausug rap or the Moro stuff.”

To provide for his young family after he got married, Bansil ran a halal fusion restaurant in Manila. It paid his bills so that finally, in 2014, he could start Morobeats to spread the kind of music that he wanted to do, and pave the way for the artists that he believed in.

“Do your best, do your thing. If you really deserve to get money, if you really deserve to get fame, then it will be there, it will follow. Don't make it the main reason why you’re doing music because you’re going to destroy your music,” he said.

“Consistency beats everything … When you put it in your mind, ‘Yes, I’m a Moro, I’m a unique guy, my sound is needed here,’ you’re the only one who can convince yourself. Your self-determination will take you anywhere.”

It took him to New York City in 2023, where Morobeats was featured on a huge Times Square billboard.

“If I can make it in New York Times Square, what about the next generation? I’m 46 and I made it there,” he said. “The young generation, they have the time.”

His plan for the young artists on his label is to stick to what they are doing without compromising. He believes hard work is the key, especially for Moro people who want to be heard.

“All these results or achievements, that’s all there. It’s like money. Money is everywhere, resources are everywhere. It’s just up to us how to get it. The only freedom that we have, I think, is in our discipline. If we don’t have that, we don’t have anything,” he said.

“The goal is to work hard. I hope my whole team sees it that way too.”