Bakunawa is a serpent who resides in the great depths of the ocean. She nests in the mud and soft stone of the crevices and caverns of the fathomless, thalassic pit. A brine breathing priestess of an order and faith older than man, and incomprehensible to his primate faculties. The serpent was made by the great Bathala, creator of the world, and she wraps herself around the earth like a great belt. A scally, coiling sash of cupidity. She is dormant throughout most of the year, but on some clear nights, pulled further from her keep by greed, hunger, and determination, she rises from the ocean to take what she believes to be hers: The Moon. For Bathala, in his boundless grace had made seven moons at the beginning of the world, and these celestial bodies filled the night sky with a mesmerizing and heavenly light. The people of the world loved the moons, but so did Bakunawa. Bakunawa was also jealous of the grandeur of these celestial forms and envious that such splendid things could exist in the world. So she began to swallow them. One by one, night by night, she devoured the moons until the only one remained. The people were horrified by Bakunawa's covetous acts as her hunger robbed the night sky of its blissful aura and plunged the world into darkness. And so when Bakunawa came for the last moon, the people rebelled. They came out of their houses and made a terrible noise. They yelled. They screamed. They banged on objects and drums, and eventually, the calamity of sound drove the serpent back into the surf. She is still down there though. Spitful and green. Biding her time to lay claim to her succulent, final prize.
This is the legend of Bakunawa, which owes its origins to the Tagalog people who reside in the modern-day Philippines. The moon devouring beast and the stories of her mother's homeland, serve as the organizing inspiration for Micaela Tobin's latest album with her noise project White Boy Scream. The project is named for the overwhelmingly homogenized demographics and aesthetics of the noise scene in the USA. While classically trained, Tobin found a different route for her self and outlet for her expression after witnessing a performance by Anna Luisa Petrisko with her group Jeepneys (a reference to the appropriation and upcycle of decommissioned military vehicles and supplies left behind by the US military in the Philipines during decades of occupation). Tobin views her presence and immersion in noise and extreme music as part of a concerted effort to open up these spaces and allow them to function in a more inclusive manner. This is certainly in keeping with the aesthetics and professed goals of noisemakers as it is one of the few realms of music that is truly participatory. How one engages with noise music is not by listening to it necessarily, but by making it yourself. In this way, it contains the seeds of a fulfilled creed that many of its musical predecessors, from folk to punk, have sworn themselves to. A totally horizontal space for creation and communication. And if this space is not open to everyone then what use is it to anyone? This is a question that Tobin takes seriously and one that cuts to the heart of her current project's thesis of liberation and decolonization.
At the same time that she attempts to pry open new space for herself and others aesthetically, White Boy Scream is also an attempt to reclaim her past. The project is meant to be a vector in this respect for understanding Tobin's past through the pursuit of her future. Reclaiming and metabolizing her Filipino heritage through the corridor of distortion and imploding operatics.
The Philipines has a long and fraught history with colonialism. In fact, the nation as it exists is the product of consolidation for the convenience of Spanish colonial powers who ruled over the territory as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, established by the Hasberg Dynasty in modern-day Mexico. This arrangement persisted for around three centuries before control of the islands was relinquished following the Spanish Empire's defeat in the Spannish-American War. This was immediately followed by a brutal war between a newly established Filipino Republic and the United States which resulted in between 200,000 and 1 million civilian casualties and the eventual subjugation of the islands under yet another colonial power, this time the United States. The US would retain the islands as a colonial territory until they were invaded and captured by Imperial Japan in the '40s. The Japanese army was ejected following some of the most brutal and costly battles of the entire Pacific Theater of WWII, eventually leading to the Philipines being recognized as an independent nation in 1946. After its independence, the Philipines continued to suffer due to the meddling of foreign powers during the cold war, and due to internal instability, economic crisis, and a rash of coups and corruption candles. In recent years, this legacy of instability eventually lead to the election of a madman, Rodrigo Duterte. A man who openly brags about the suffering he is able to inflict on the people of the Philippines and the murders he has personally ordered and committed as part of his "anti-drug" campaign.
As an attempt to reclaim her identity from the colonial intrusions that have produced Philipine's chaotic present, Tobin embodies both the sea monster Bakunawa and the Tagalog people on her new record. The serpent, single-mindedly determined to sink its teeth into the great pearls on offer in the celestial plain, treasures wrongfully laid claim to by others in their vainglory. And the people, whose zealous, rebellious noise acts as an offensive wall of sound, barricading pillagers from setting foot on the islands. Not only is the album conceptually thick and rich with these entwined dichotomies, but it is also captivating in its elegant songcraft and searing in its hot blushes of spectrum peaking noise. "Rockets," true to the premise of its title, is parted by jet-stream shaped furrows of gnawed strings and circuit melting distortion. "Mirrors" is a tarnished, swell and gush of chorus vocals, swallowed by the bedlam breathing portal of a great dragon-like roar. And, lastly, "Apolaki" is an electro-piercing, tooth through tomes of a history written by its victors in opposition to its subject, a magnificent ouroboros linking of the final track with the first, in a wheel of sound whose motion is like the surging, heartbeat of millions.
Changing the world is a dangerous task. And for all of the force of White Boy Scream's headlong rush and execution, I think Tobin is acutely, and painfully, aware of this fact. Both the opening track and the closer "Apolaki" feature the defiant refrain "they can't erase me." A declaration of Tobin's spiritual intent, manifest in song, to be heard and acknowledged as a woman of flesh and blood, descended from blood that she believes can not be diluted with the clumsy, acidic saliva that colonialism has spread across the world with the long, luxurious, lap of its greedy, glacial, and suffocating tongue. But as her defiant words reach their zenith on the opening track the beautiful resonance of her voice is buried in an explosion of sonic artillery, dropping from on high like a blanketing, carpet-bombing run of sonic white phosphorus. For the truth is that most of the people who have opposed colonialism have been erased. Most of the people who have been inconvenient to its expansion have been expunged. And the great majority of people who do, or who could potentially, stand in the way of world financial interests find themselves displaced, destroyed, disappeared, and ruined. There is a great deal of hope expressed on Bakunawa, but also some trepidation. A weariness acknowledgment that to truly oppose power and the fluid morphology of capital, imperialism, and world hegemony is to risk complete annihilation. I get the sense that Tobin believes that this fight is worth having. Even if the fruits of this struggle can feel as impossible to obtain as plucking the moon from the sky.