Sometimes, you’re already able to tell a song’s going to be good from the intro alone, and The Hernandez Bros.’ “Jungle Juice” is a great example. At once wild and rhythmic, it’s the type of song that gets your head bobbing from the sign on. From there, it dives into a beat that slowly builds up its crescendo: a shout of unbridled energy that’ll get you stomping and gasping for air. In short, it’s the perfect song for a high-octane festival—and an apt one for this episode of Sound Fiesta.

With the drums and percussion, actual brothers Miguel and Chiko Hernandez know how to play the crowd and draw out a wide range of emotions—a feat not many can pull off. (If the chaotic mania of their songs sounds familiar, you might have heard the two during their Wilderness days.) And there’s something highly instinctual about each song. “Jungle Juice,” in particular, manages to ride the ebb and tide of anyone who hears it.

We got to speak to the duo on the origins of The Hernandez Bros., composing PSYCHOTROPIKAL music on percussions, and their next steps.

How and when did you guys get into percussion?

My older brother Miguel got into the drums back when he was about 1st year High School. Strongly influenced by Travis Barker, he dived into the high school music scene covering songs with his classmates. This was about mid-2000s. I naturally followed my brother—who’s three years older—in his footsteps by teaching myself how to play the drums.

He later started Wilderness, a psychedelic rock band in his early college days, with Allan Dela Merced (AKA Lustbass) and Mau Torralba. I was astonished by the whole culture of being young, playing in a band, listening to non-pop music, and going out at night. I thought it was the coolest thing to do.

Apart from the scene, the music fully consumed me. It gave me a sense of freedom, connection, and gratification that was unmatched. I joined Wilderness approximately 2009, armed with a bass drum, a drum mallet, and maracas.

Pat Sarabia noticed that we were off to something exciting and joined the band while donating a pair of congas to me, which were owned but stored away by her older brother.

I intuitively played the congas like a drum set but then my first mentor, Paul Zialcita, said that a percussionist’s role is to play the notes that aren’t played by the drummer. That was about 2012, and he set me on my course to dive deep into Latin-style of playing coupled with my baptism-like encounter of Santana’s Woodstock ’69 performance of “Soul Sacrifice.” I was hooked on the congas, YouTubing all the greats from Willie Bobo, Adonis Panter Calderon, Candido, Giovanni Hiladgo, Tito Puente, Boogie from Manila, etc. I would practice EVERYDAY and rhythm was everything to me. This was about 2012-2018. #riddimislife

For our readers, could you tell us how The Hernandez Bros. duo come about?

Ever heard of the saying “inspiration by desperation?”

Well, my brother and I created The Hernandez Bros. out of sheer desperation: we needed money and we needed to play the music of our soul. So we took a chance, put ourselves out there as a drum and percussion duo with fervent dedication to make our mark. The music scene responded to the energy we shared and allowed us to live off music and playing the beats of our soul. This was about late 2016. It was a proud moment for us because we were making ends meet with a profession that ours elders told us was NOT a profession! We were playing music, making people dance and gyrate, earning a living, traveling, partying, and diving deeper and deeper into our crafts. We proved to ourselves that the dedicated artist is a professional and a firestarter.

Was being an all-percussion duo a conscious decision?

Yes, it was a very conscious decision. It was a practical decision, as a matter of fact, because we only relied on ourselves to deliver a performance. We did not feel the need to hire other musicians because we felt drums and percussion alone can entertain. Coupled with the fact that Talent Fees were only split into two, we saw playing as a duo as the wise thing to do.

On your FB page, your genre is described as PSYCHOTROPIKAL. Can you tell us more about this?
Our close friend Lucas gave us that name. Lucas is a phenomenal human from Costa Rica who now resides in the Philippines. He is the very definition of hustle and intuition. He caught our wild and sweaty set at a Z Hostel rooftop party and blurted out “PSYCHOTROPIKAL” to our face. It made sense.

We derive rhythmic order from a chaos of feeling and share our primal understanding of the tropics to the city streets where we bang our drums in unison to the howls of our soul.

What’s your creative process when composing music on the percussion?

Initially, we would take lots of cues from arrangements done by Afro-Cuban bands, funk bands, and rock bands. We have songs that are heavily structured but we always leave 1-2 parts of our set that’s PURELY IMPROV, where we unleash this chugging rhythm that we just build and vary upon while reading the crowds’ response.

We have this concept of “squeezing the beat,” which means keeping the foundational elements of a rhythm grounded while exploring variations and colors that present itself along the way. We know we’ve squeezed the beat when there’s this undeniable feeling of being “locked in” with the explosiveness of the party experience which the crowd feels with us, while being in control of our technique.

We take that party experience to the climax where we break into this dancehall-like breakdown we call “bagsakan,” and encourage the crowd to chant “HOO!” with us at every interval. It’s a great way to get the crowd involved.

Now, as of late, we’ve been creating tracks and live performances that take cues from Techno and Club music. It’s a natural progression from where we’ve come from. Our musicianship is evolving as we incorporate more technology to how we execute our performances.

How did this apply to “Jungle Juice?”

“Jungle Juice” is improv. Jungle Juice is just a silly name.

You’ve been doing some collaborations as of late. What’s next for The Hernandez Bros., then?

We’re scheduled to release a collaborative vinyl album with Lustbass sometime this year, pressed and distributed by an international company who’s got connections to the club scenes of Europe.

The project is called “The Path of the Stallion” which will be supported by a long-term visual project where we produce several films with a central storyline about three renegade musicians touring several galaxies in the mission to propagate The Beat. We’re in the pre-prod process of creating our first visual release with our friends from Zoopraxi.

This visual narrative project is something my brother, Miguel, feels strongly about as he is a passionate screenplay actor and writer.

I encourage our audience to follow the other careers we lead as brothers. I am heavily into entrepreneurship in the tech world while my brother is heavily into acting and filmmaking.

Adios, amigos.

Sound Fiesta is in collaboration with Playhouse Studio for video production and Kindred Productions for audio management. This video is shot in XX:XX, Makati City.