Sung and performed in Ilokano by Jasmine Orpilla using tobacco, soil, bone particles, copper, brass, Jasmine’s grandfather’s guava-tree leaves, and Jasmine’s own natural hair.

The “KAPRE” is a supernatural shapeshifting creature of the Philippines, popularly known to be a cigar-smoking tree dweller, and watchful guardian giant that at times may cry like a bird from high in the branches. In her performance piece, the “KAPRE” is perched near the defunct tobacco farm of Jasmine’s family, near Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines. Tobacco farming had been Jasmine’s grandparents’ livelihoods that overseas (American) markets regularly took sanctioned cuts out, leading up to and financing the destruction of wartime. The “KAPRE” is an environmental witness to this long-term theft and eventual plunder. Sung as the echo of a gut-wrenching Ilokano lament that was once a tender memory of Jasmine’s grandmother’s lullabies, the “KAPRE” continually transforms the voice that forcibly presses out of its body words that are formulated for the moon to hear, slowly, cycled over the passage of time:

O bright moon hear my cries, come to my darkened world before it’s too late.