…in a galaxy far, far away…
I was a freshman at the University Of California at Irvine… Like most colleges, there were various organizations and clubs that students could join to meet friends and do social activities… And like a Filipino lemming, I joined the campus’ Filipino culture club, Kababayan. (Everyone was doing it… lol)
Anyway, every year the club holds their annual Filipino culture night which usually consists of several cultural dances all tied together via a storyline which related to the experiences of Filipinos today. That year, I tried out for the Kababayan Modern dance suite… (Kaba Modern for short.) This suite covered dances outside of the “traditional” Filipino culture. In other words, it allowed us to bust it hip-hop style yo!!! 
But in all seriousness, hip-hop dance and the culture in general has permeated the Filipino culture. I could go into how American culture in general has effected Pinoys globally, but obviously that’s outside the scope of this blog…
To make a long story short, I actually became a member of Kaba Modern one year after its conception. Back then, it was just a component of a theatrical showcase… We didn’t go battle other crews, strangers off the street didn’t recognize the name or members in the group… etc etc… Little did I know that Kaba Modern would continue to grow and become a world famous dance crew. (See MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew Season 1.)
That year, I danced my ass off… I met my best college buds thru that crew. It really did become a family… And the very next year, I didn’t make the cut! (Which was a bummer since I tried out as a duo with one of my friends who did make it, I helped choreo the tryout routine, AND the fact that one my roomies was a judge. lol)
My dance career died the year I was cut, but it gave me time to focus on another hobby: DJing. The year that I didn’t make it, Kaba Modern grew in skill, but the choreography music sucked… So the very next year, I was recruited back into Kaba Modern as their DJ. I lived in the “Kaba Modern” house. My roomies were my best friends, they were all Kaba Modern coordinators and all Kaba Modern dancers became honorary roommates, and we all slacked off in academics… We ate, drank, and slept hip-hop music and dance… All I remember was late nights of studying dance crew videos and watching my friends choreograph as they threw me ideas to put into the mix. I focused on being a better DJ and I did my share of studying and networking with other DJs in the ever growing SoCal DJ community. Although I failed miserably academically, those times were my fondest. To my friends from back in the day, I miss you all!!!
So this was my first ever Kaba Modern mix… I found it in a bunch of mp3 archives my friend gave to me a few years ago… (The original mix was mastered on cassette!!!) The mix was a journey of several “modern” styles ranging from Disco to Jazz to Hip-Hop. I knew I had to represent proper that year because the year I actually danced, the music was done by DJ Melo-D (UCI alum David Mendoza)… By the time that I became Kaba Modern’s DJ, Melo-D and the rest of the Beat Junkies were killing DJs world wide in DJ competitions.
I pulled out all the stops in this mix… Video game sfx, quirky movie themes, artist medleys, crazy audio edits… I even sampled a porno from a VHS tape to throw into the “nasty” section! Anyway, I hope you like it… Here it goes…
My First Kaba Modern Mix Ever
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…and the year after… and the year after that… 
and so on and so forth…
