Coquí Lullaby
celebration & creation
As we lead up to my Golden 30 Born/Birthday Earth Strong this Saturday, May 30 & the one year anniversary of the Soultree EP release, I want to celebrate with my words. I have yearned too long for other people’s words when I’ve been craving and carving my own all along. This debut project actualized for me a dream that I wished for and trusted I would achieve somehow despite too many odds against it. In moving more fully into my life’s purpose, I set the goal to ritualize my music as a celebratory act throughout this week and honor each song in the EP & the EP itself from the project to the release and how this SoulSeed has been planted to this day.
COQUí in CONTEXT
Coquí Lullaby is the second official song that I ever wrote on my own without the support and collaboration of Elephant Rebellion. Writing this song marked a massive transition I was experiencing from Legal Assistant/Community Organizer/Social Justice Artivist/Burned Out Self-Neglecting person to who I am now - a Spirit-Centered Holistic Creatrix who uses songs, words, energy, herbs, spirit, language, space/event creation, and connection to build bridges across realms and worlds with community.
I go into the lyrics and meaning more in the link found in the section below, but Coquí is a small frog native to Puerto Rico. Not only did I love this song for its nostalgic, dreamy sounds, but the connection to Puerto Rico, which was ceded with Guam, the Philippines to the United States by Spain in the Treaty of Paris of 1898, resounded with the many colonial connections that have unfolded in my life and migration journey as a Philippine born, Marshallese national, now living in colonized Turtle Island.
Meaning of the lyrics
You can find the meaning of the lyrics for this song here.
Creating the Music
I wrote this song in the Fall after I returned from the Philippines in July after journeying with Kaluluwa Kolectivo (Soul Collective) through Bayanihan Foundation’s Pagbabalik program. This volunteer program allowed me to visit all three major provinces of the Philippines (Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao aka LUZVIMINDA…more on this in another post) through DACA’s Advance Parole option for Education and Humanitarian reasons with many thanks to my friend Prerna at Lal Legal.
Before I left for the Philippines, I attended the Center for Babaylan Studies Symposium in April at Athens, Ohio where Paring Bert or Father Albert Alejo spoke words that I took to heart and soul. He said Mindanao, our Southern province with the most resources protected by indigenous people needs lullabies. Amidst his peacekeeping between our people in the Philippines, he asked for lullabies, so the creation of this song, in essence, is a spiritual calling directly from the lands that I cannot freely or legally return to even though it is where I was conceived and born. I send my songs in solidarity and in faith that the winds will travel it to anyone who is in need.
When I came back from the Philippines, it took months for me to readjust to the “United States” ~ the land and the way of living in this present time felt unnatural to me. I quit my day job and all the lives that I didn’t want to live and all the people didn’t want to be anymore. Before I left, my aunt asked me to stay with her from August until she recovered from surgery, which presented an opportunity to give back to an elder that raised me and to mindfully transition to a new life/self, which migration had allowed me to do many times before. During my stay in Colorado, I wrote this song while expanding on my own healing modalities through music. I was doing it “for me”, which allowed so much of the pain I was feeling pour through in an attempt at healing itself.
I got my own mic, piano, protools program and finally worked on beats that my friend ESLvis sent me in 2014. He had sent me this folder of beats after a conversation with him inspired me before recording the musical portion of my poem Stolen Lands (2009) with my friend L O Kari.
While in the presence of vast mountains and deserts, I worked on my breath support by… just trying to breathe in this hyper-elevated new land I wasn’t used to (it got me dizzy a few times tbh, so be mindful with mountains) and seeking more tools of growth in a private way that wasn’t intended to perform my pain for community or to promote political campaigns. I practiced vocal overtones, watered my aunt’s plants, took aquatics classes with her, and started shifting my diet to reduce meat due to eczema.
The first verse and hook were written in Colorado, while the second verse was written in Chicago. You can tell how each land influences the emotions in that shift and how my own perspective changed in the move. We go from soothing storytelling, lullaby form to more direct hip hop ancestral platonic love medicine in one short song that travels me and mines and you and yours through spacetime together.
Transforming harm & PAIN through song
Throughout my life, I have been seeking to repair broken families and friendships lost in migration, translation, and the passing of time only to repeat the harm and learn from it in my own way. When I came to my life’s purpose of creating music, it was out of a deep need to be heard, to lament the feelings that were being silenced, and to free an energy in me that felt trapped. I didn’t know I would arrive to my dream and life calling this way, but I now see it as such an enormous blessing that has deepened my creations and their meanings further for me and others.
Before leaving for the Philippines, I was on a continuous emotional break down having to do with being undocumented, unhappy, unhealthy, and unwell. My body was breaking down and my yoni was my greatest ally, companion, dearest friend, primary advocate, and main witness to my depression, binging, and break downs. From private to public conflicts and battles ~ I was having them all. Feeling like I was living a perpetual tantrum and trauma of my existence.
I joined Elephant Rebellion in 2013 around the same time I started formally organizing for immigrant justice. I shifted from the occasional immigrant poet featured at the fundraiser to direct action organizer, speaker, and coordinator for mental health, environmental, and art based actions. While I was learning to write, rap, and make music with my ER brothers, I was learning about the policies, histories, and injustices that dehumanized me and my people and learning tools to dismantle them with people who shared similar struggles and challenges as undocumented. As any involved community or circle you enter in your early years - it got messy and enmeshed-y lol, but I was deep in it.
Idealistically, I thought we would all support each other in getting free when really all of us had different soul wounds that we weren’t accessing resources, support, or even awareness of as marginalized people demanding our rights with every single tool, resource, and source of energy we had. In the lack of transformative justice I felt within interpersonal falling outs and macrosystem problems underlying it all, I sought peace in myself and with people who I may never directly reach again through the solace I find in song. Coquí-reating a “dream space” of repair even if it is only wishful singing is a ritual I am forever grateful for & now pass on to you in the re-telling of these experiences. I trust & pray you will use this magic and medicine well and to serve the highest good.
Coqui Lullaby Music Video
Music video as ritual
Filmed by my spirit brother MoBeats on Indigenous People’s Day - Monday, October 10, 2016, I called in my spirit, organizing, and creative families to doula this offering and usher it into the world with me.
At this time, I felt like these circles and communities were so separate and every time I would gather folks around celebrations like my birthday, I felt nervous because I didn’t know how everyone would respond, I didn’t know if I could be myself completely, fully, in my multitudinous Gemini ways.
In a way, I always wonder who will show up if me or my relatives are detained - for our most sacred, solemn, and most sacrificial days. I like to believe that our bonds are strong enough that you all will show up in the ways you can when you can. And I wish that for every person who is detained until we no longer have detentions. A(wx)men.
Spirit has always told me to bring people together through my music and all the seeds that I plant - through my full existence, embodiment, and interaction with the world. I learned this practice from my family and I thank them for the powerful tool of pakikisama or getting along/aiming for togetherness.
Spirit also guided us to this beautiful space at 31st beach for the filming of this video. One day, DC and I were on a walk by our apartment and we stumbled into La Ronda Parakata. I looked further into what this beautiful circular outdoor sanctuary was all about and found out it was part of the Park’s District program to connect with different cultural communities. This particular one represented butterflies and migration. We couldn’t have found a more synchronistic and on brand location in symbolism and purpose for our gathering. Plus, there were 20 wooden stumps for seating centered around a few stumps in the middle, which says ceremony all over it. These are some of the ways Spirit/God/Creator of many and all names has shown up for me in their own divine time. This also shows how sacred shapes and creations are translated in all we do whether we are conscious or aware of it or not.
I want to thank everyone who was part of this again for believing in me, this music, and for trusting in spirit & our processes together as ways we are blending and connecting our AncesTrees in sacred exchange. Please see everyone’s sacred names and presence in the Music Video above if you haven’t already <3
When we gathered on reclaimed Indigenous People’s Day 10.10.2016, we brought with us pictures of our ancestors that we wanted to honor and living relatives we wanted to send love and healing energy to as part of the grounding for the night scenes of this video. I wanted to co-create something real that would be an impactful exchange for all the souls and bodies that came through as well as their lineages. No waste, just ceremony from within. At the end, we had some vegan lentil, tomato, spinach stew I made, snacks, brownies to celebrate Mo & Monotone’s birthdays.
I especially want to thank my soul seaStars and Co-Producers for this vision, Crystle Diño & Kai Kai Mascareñas for co-creating this ritual creation and process with me. We gathered at Crystle’s family home for a couple weeks listening to Pantayo and asking the song with our bodies and spirits, what wanted to be spoken in moveMeant and expression.
Growing his videography and directing skills through this (sur)rendering, my bro Mo did not hold back on his process. It was a joy and honor to Co-Direct this video with him and also learn to humble myself because I was so ready to get in Lake Michigan in Chicago Fall and that just would’ve been foolish. LOL
We released this video on May 15, 2017 in time for the arrival of Gem-in-I season. At the time of release, DC and I were on our way to moving back to Chicago after living in LA briefly from November 2016-July 2017. It was really a wild ride to get to the point of this release because artists often have crises of questioning if they are still artists without releasing or creating content.
I personally felt I was performing and hosting workshops without having enough digital media or tangible works to share with universes outside of the physical spaces I was in, so this first music video release was a revelation. I almost thought it wouldn’t happen and I also briefly believed cointelpro was monitoring me and my work, hiding my google folders and whatnot, and afraid that I would somehow be punished for being a visibly vocal undocumented artist. I mean, who knows. We are still here, though.
I share this because you really don’t know what the funk is going on behind the scenes in someone’s life, creative process, or spiritual experiences. It is both/and and also none of what you think you know until you witness the truth with your own soul & heart. In creating music and all of the pieces of the puzzle, I know one truth to be so true, that we cannot get free and we cannot heal alone. These creations came to life and light because of the deep faith, strength, bravery, trust, creativity, effort, and love of all the people whose energy have touched me and this music. To them/us I offer this all up with my deepest reverence & gratitude.