Head in the Clouds Festival spotlights Asian music, food and culture – Orange County Register

For Corrine Parco and Andie Pangan, Saturday, August 20th, Head In The Clouds Festival in Pasadena felt a little bit like home.

Not that they’ve ever attended the Brookside Festival at the Rose Bowl before. But the music — pop, hip-hop, electro and more — is connected to their Filipino culture in particular and the broader Asian music scene in general, they said.

“A lot of the Asian artists that we love are here,” said Parco of Tracy, who, like Pangan of Torrance, is a recent graduate of California State University-Sacramento. “We love to see the representation.”

They posed for photos in front of one of the giant inflatable cloud emojis that were tied here and there about the festival site for the purpose.

Over at the food stalls at Night Market 626, a long, long line of festival-goers waited patiently to place their orders at the Boba Guys booth.

Cheryl Tam, Soobin Choi and Haley Tran, all Michigan State University students, waited 30 minutes before getting their drinks.

“I feel like there aren’t a lot of festivals that cater to the artists that we like,” said Tam of Ann Arbor, Michigan, as she, like Choi, cooled off with a classic black milk tea boba.

Record label 88rising created the Head In The Clouds festival to do just that, helping to bring Asian and Asian-American artists alongside the rise of K-pop acts and other Asian pop culture celebrations like KCON LA, which takes place in Los Angeles is taking place to announce the convention center this weekend.

“I think some of these songs are becoming mainstream and a lot of people outside of the Asian-American family are attracted to them,” said Tran from Hanoi, Vietnam.

She and her friends said they’re most looking forward to artists like K-pop singer Chungha, Chinese singer-rapper Jackson Wang, Japanese singer-songwriter Joji and Vietnamese-American singer Keshi, who headlined at the last minute Replacing Niki on Saturday would be canceled after contracting COVID-19.

Musical performances early Saturday ranged from a gentle set by Korean-American R&B singer Hojean to a more energetic performance by Vietnamese-American rapper Shotta Spence.