Episode 54

FOREVER WAITING...
[created for the Words on Music course with Kate Molleson and Peter Meanwell at the Darmstadt Summer Course 2023]

A tram ride to Darmstadt’s Lichtenbergschule turns into a journey of reflecting how passports control one’s mobility. An encounter with Filipino visitors, weekly protests at Luisenplatz on Iran’s atrocities, and flipping passport pages disrupt a daily life of church bells, audible traffic lights, and utility shortwave transmissions – Cedrik Fermont likewise tells stories that challenge assumptions about how we know the world. The tram ride stops midway, migrants reach the border. They are left waiting if they can pass through...

Languyin mo ang ilog;
Magilas ang kabayong hubad!
Naghihintay sa wala.

(Swim by the river;
The naked stallion shows off!
Waiting for nothing.)

Credits:

Cedrik Fermont – narration
Juro Kim Feliz – Tagalog haiku

Additional recordings:
Frau Leben Freiheit protest on 16 August 2023 at Luisenplatz, Darmstadt
conversation with anonymous Filipino couple

ewig warten… (forever waiting…) [2023]

Episode 55 | softer•ish (soft II )

UNTIL DUSK
Juro Kim Feliz
stereo acousmatic work, composed 2018. For "Sound Photography," a global collaborative project by Cities and Memory (http://citiesandmemory.com/sound-photography). Photography by Giulia Biasibetti.

N.B. Listen in stereo!


Composer's notes:

Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to create a series of sculptures, Marc Didou’s idea of resignation to shun away the creator’s subjectivity renders stillness as a proactive exercise of agency. Within spliced planes and pixilated surfaces to render a perception of flatness, Giulia Biasibetti’s photograph of Didou’s “Échos” in Turin, Italy emanate vibrations transcending the photograph’s two-dimensional space. First presented in Cities and Memory's "Sound Photography" (2018), "Hanggang sa Takipsilim" (Until Dusk) responds to this particular photograph with recorded Philippine indigenous instruments and narrated histories to challenge the flatness of time and space. Crude methods of microsampling—manually pixelating and splicing recordings into shreds—paved the way for stitching and creating tapestries of rough textures, glitches, and echoing vibrations. Similar to the avoidance of automating such processes, the political voices of the diaspora lean towards negating Didou's "resignation-as-creation”—actors and historical agents can never passively stand still in creating ongoing histories. Ironically, Didou’s open-mouthed sculpture stretches one’s imagination as if one calls out echoes of pasts, presents, and futures within intermingling spaces. In this regard, "Hanggang sa Takipsilim" juxtaposes recordings of indigenous instruments by Jayson Palolan with an excerpt of Hannah Leah Guanlao’s “Choose Your Own Perspective” (2016) to capture a Filipino-Canadian millennial’s response to present-day historical revisionism surrounding the brutal dictatorship of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos during the 1970s-1980s.

“Sometimes, it feels like our struggle is hopeless.
Halos araw-araw, naririnig ko na lang na may isa na naman sa atin ang kinuha sa gabi.”
[Almost everyday, I just hear that one of us was abducted once again during the night].

- Choose Your Own Perspective, Hannah Guanlao (2016). English translation by the composer. Used with permission.

Hanggang sa Takipsilim [2018]

"Airplane wings fly to Nebraska. Words emerge out of endless blue skies. Paws touch solid ground as miles stretch across cornfields. Melodies and piano strings finally fill in the grumpy silences."

Track credits:

Music and lyrics by Juro Kim Feliz. 
All instrumental and vocal tracks produced by Grumpy Kitty Boy. 
Mixing by Rojh Baquiran (The North Hit Project). 
Mastering by Sebastián Gómez Mancheno. 
Cover artwork courtesy of Yuna Kim.

====

AIRPLANE WINGS 
Grumpy Kitty Boy 

Blue sky thinking 
Even though nothing comes sublimating 
Curious meanderings 
All reminiscing what didn't sink in 
Your photograph, staring 

CHORUS 
Airplane wings keep flying 
While you stood, not caring 
Stereotypes start dismantling 
Red flags you keep ignoring 

Oysters and clams, craving 
Your warm embrace, crushing 
What didn't sink in 
Our chemistry, persisting 

CHORUS 
Airplane wings keep flying 
While you flinched, not wanting 
Million miles start disrupting 
Geographies that keep insisting

Airplane Wings

Grumpy Kitty Boy roams the streets of Toronto and Manila in his grumpy dreams. He likes singing badly and loves his kitty treats—irony and cynicism in glittery candy wrappings—but dislikes dry kibbles with a passion! He writes poetry when he's at his saddest, and writes songs when he's at his grumpiest. With Bad Puppy Mummy in close watch, he is kept company by a family of animals in the wild, including Raccoon, Pet Monkey, Canada Goose, and others.

Grumpy Kitty Boy is a singer-songwriter project of Toronto-based composer Juro Kim Feliz. Grumpy Kitty Boy artwork is provided courtesy of Korean visual artist Yuna Kim.

Airplane Wings

Grumpy Kitty Boy

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