These offerings include elements of improvisation, writing, song and DIY visuals. In the first offering specifically, I have included a traditional Ibanag chant my mother sings in her home dialect. Shared with her permission, this Ibanag chant is sung to call a person’s soul back to their loved ones and/or to their Earthly being, guiding the soul as it travels back “home”. It is a chant I would hear my mother singing as we returned home from travelling. The titles of these offerings are also in Ibanag.

Note: The Ibanag are an ethnolinguistics minority in the northern province of Luzon, Philippines. The language, which bears the same name, is an endangered language. The title is translated as “the people of the river” (I = people of, Banag = river). My family, through my maternal connection, is part of a small population that still speaks this language today.

Credits:
Thank you to my mother, Paulina Corpuz, for offering her voice and ancestral knowledge to these pieces.

Thank you to Malcolm Connor for providing the bass part in offering 1.

Thank you to the artists and creatives involved in this project for inspiring and empowering my artistic voice during this project.