THE PRECISE PUNK OF LIGAYA ESCUETA

The indie rock prodigy went from writing songs in her bedroom to being signed to Ely Buendia’s label and representing the Philippines in SXSW Sydney.

- Text and photos by ANDREA PANALIGAN

At 15, perhaps like many teenagers, Ligaya Escueta was cooking up worlds in her bedroom. She released “Laughing in Milk” in 2022, her entirely self-written, seven-track debut album about stumbling into one’s place in the world.

Now, three years later, she brought some of these songs to the South by Southwest music festival — in the same stage that the likes of Billie Eilish and Amy Winehouse previously performed in, and our own Ben&Ben and Ena Mori.

“One of their values and goals as a festival is to help new, young, or indie artists make connections and give a jumpstart to their careers,” Ligaya says. We sit among the kitschy, homey furniture of Cafe Siriusdan in Mandaluyong. “They were accepting applications for artists, so my label applied (for) me, and they formally invited us to perform.”

She flew to Sydney, Australia with her bandmates and her family. It was her first time traveling overseas with friends. “It was like a field trip,” she recalls.

Before music, she had been training and competing in ballet, which perhaps explains the precision and polish so apparent even in her first record. Even while speaking to me, Ligaya is deliberate with her words; before I take her pictures with a disposable camera, she practices the poses in a mirror. The grace is obvious, even when we agree that her indie rock music “is not very ballet.”

“It’s funny, because when I was younger, there were some songs I really liked that had ‘yung pagka-indie rock already, but I didn’t know it yet,” she says. “One of the things that drew me towards indie rock, aside from the sound, is that it’s very freeing compared to ballet, which is very structured and strict.”