Folklife Festival Narrative Session: My H'Oprah: Spoken Word with Regie Cabico
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Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Can you guys hear me? [[laughs]] Thank you for being here this afternoon for my H'Oprah and Other Poems with Regie Cabico and Jerrica Escoto.
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Speaker 1: We have two queer Filipinx spoken word artists who have taken [[whoop]] who have taken top prizes in spoken word poetry and stories and they both reside in D.C. now.
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Speaker 1: Please join me in welcom -- in welcoming Jerrica Escoto and Regie Cabico. [[applause]]
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Regie Cabico: [[muffled]] Let's give it up for Perla, thank you Perla.
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Regie Cabico: [[clear]] Let's see if this is on. Is it on? Terrific. Um, I am Regie Cabico. I am really excited to be here as part of On the Move.
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Regie Cabico: Um, in the next 40 minutes or so you're going to be listening to spoken word poetry from queer Filipinx poets.
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Regie Cabico: My name is Regie Cabico. Jerrica Escoto is also a terrific performer.
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Regie Cabico: We live in D.C. and we hope that in this set we can give you a perspective to being the children of Filipino immigrants.
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Regie Cabico: Alright? So, everybody asks me where I'm from and I tell them it depends on what I'm auditioning for. [[laughter]].
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Regie Cabico: Like if it's West Side Story, I'm Puerto Rican. If it's Miss Saigon, I'm--whatever.
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Regie Cabico: And then I figured out, it depends on what season of the year it is, 'cause like, in spring I get the Chinese parts.
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Regie Cabico: In June I get the South Asian parts. And by August I'm up for The Color Purple: The Musical. [[laughter]]
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Regie Cabico: The government asks me to check one if I want money.
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Regie Cabico: I say, How could you ask me to be one race? I stand proudly before you, a fierce Filipino, who knows how to belt hard gospel songs played to African drums
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Regie Cabico: And loving the music to suffering beats and lashes from men's eyes of the capital's streets.
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Regie Cabico: Southeast D.C. with its sleepy crime.
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Regie Cabico: My mother nursed patients from seven to nine.
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Regie Cabico: Patients gray from the railroad riding past civil rights.
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Regie Cabico: I walked their tracks when I entertained them at the chapel and made their canes pillars of percussion to my heavy gospel.
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Regie Cabico: My comedy out loud laughing about
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Regie Cabico: Our shared stolen experiences of the South.
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Regie Cabico: Would it surprise you if I told you my blood was delivered from north?
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Regie Cabico: Of Portuguese vessels who gave me spiritual stones and the turn in my eyes?
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Regie Cabico: My father's name where they conquered the Pacific isles?
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Regie Cabico: My hair is black and thick as nagrito, growing abundant as sampaguita
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Regie Cabico: Flowers defying civilization like Pilipino pygmies that dance on the mountain.
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Regie Cabico: I could give you an epic about my ways of life or my look, and you want me to fill it in one square box?
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Regie Cabico: How could you tell me to fill Gilgamesh with all of its waters in one square box?
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Regie Cabico: From what shape or integer do you count existing identities? Grant loans for the mind or Crayola white censor sheets?
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Regie Cabico: There's no One Kind to fill for anyone.
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Regie Cabico: You: tell me who I am, what gets the most money, and I'll sing that song like a one-man caravan.
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Regie Cabico: I know arias from Naples, Tunis and Accra, lullabies from welfare, food stamps and nature.
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Regie Cabico: And you want me to sing one song?
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Regie Cabico: I have danced jigs with Jim Crow and shuffled my hips to the sound of guitar of Clapton and Hendrix;
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Regie Cabico: waltzed with dead lovers, skipped to bamboo sticks, balleted Kabuki and mimed Kathakali, Arrivederci the rhumba and tapped Tin Pan Alley, and you want me to dance the Bhagavad Gita on a box too small for a Thumbelina thin diva? I'll
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Speaker 1: Let's give it up for Jerrica Escoto!
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[[applause]]
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Jerrica Escoto: Crowded room, thank you all for being here. Uh, I'm gonna start with this poem.
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Jerrica Escoto: My name is Jerrica N Escoto. Being the first American-born child, my parents left the fate of my name to my sister, who was 6 years old at the time.
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Jerrica Escoto: She named me after her favourite cartoon, Jem and the Holograms.
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Jerrica Escoto: My parents are from Pampanga, Philippines. I was raised in Southeast San Diego, two blocks from Skyline Drive, where blues and red spots skinned till it turned black and purple.
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Jerrica Escoto: I adopted cursing as my primary language. My tongue grew pointy like the stars on the American flag.
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Jerrica Escoto: It didn't expand like the sun on the flag of the Philippines until my grandmother was on her deathbed, and I had to say "I love you" to her in English.
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Jerrica Escoto: It didn't occur to me that I spent my life okay with the fact that my grandmother never really understood me.
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Jerrica Escoto: I am Filipino American and discovering the Filipino part means castaway on this land.
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Jerrica Escoto: It's hard to find myself in a nation that resembles broken puzzle pieces, a home that feels more gift shop than museum,
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Jerrica Escoto: when the only exposure mainstream news has on the Philippines is for Manny Pacquiao or natural disasters,
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Jerrica Escoto: when the Filipino channel features commercials and game shows mimicking American pop culture,
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Jerrica Escoto: when Tagalog is becoming "tagalong" English, when even while the Spanish left over a century ago there are still traces of them in our last name.
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Jerrica Escoto: Our identity is endangered and I feel like I am disappearing, where is my resolve? I want to evolve into a person whose roots I shouldn't have to dig for.
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Jerrica Escoto: Being second generation doesn't have to mean being American comes first.
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Jerrica Escoto: To my grandmother: "Kaluguran daka." -- I love you. "Patawarin mo ako" -- Please forgive me. "Eku pabalu nung nino ako." -- I don't know who I am yet. I am still searching for the Filipino in me.
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[[applause]]
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Regie Cabico: Mother fetches the fruit from the mango grove behind closed bamboo.
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Speaker 1: Describes their dance. Peaches, plums, cantaloupes before my first world eyes.
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When the sun blazed in the dust, she let the mellifluous fluids fall on her assignment books.
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Where the mangoes were first planted, mother, an infant, hid under gravel, swaddled by Lola, my grandmother, after my aunt and uncle were tied to the trunk of the first tender mango tree and stabbed by the Japanese.
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Mother and daughter living off fallen mangoes, the pits planted in darkness for many years, until I was born.
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My mom would carry the mangoes across deserts and cornfields.
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On the plane, as we cross time zones, mom unwraps her ripe mangoes, the ones from the tree Lola had planted before she gave birth to my mother, the daughter that left home to be a nurse in the states, who'd marry a Filipino navy man and have three children of her own.
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Mom eating the fruit, whose juices rain over deserts and cornfields. [[soft applause]]
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Um, I'm gonna pick another short poem, but before I go on, I have to give a shout out to extraordinary Filipina artist, Wilma Consul is in the house!
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Um, and when you're a Filipino artist in D.C., you really stick together, and, not only do you stick together, but you inspire each other.
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And so, Wilma, as theater artist, a chef, as friends, has always been there, so I give you a shout out, so, um, yes.
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And if you go at Wilma Consul NPR you'll see her cooking dish -- I forgot the name of the dish -- [[someone from the audience calls out the name of the dish]]
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Picadillo! And you'll find her version of it, and you will also hear an extraordinary Filipina story.
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Regie Cabico: Afternoon in Pangasinan, with no electricity, I did not grow up in the Philippines. I was i-in college by the time I remembered what was going on.
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And so they have these things called brown outs, where the electricity goes. Like why do they call it brown outs? So that s-just caus filipinos are brown.
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So um--an afternoon in Pangasinan with no electricity.
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In the yellow of butter, my mother colors my skin. In the yellow of sun, my skin becomes brown. In the yellow of yolk, my grandfather finds an egg.
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In the yellow of noon, we swallow the baby chick. But look they call it, long life he says and discards the purple shell.
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Audience: Alright [[applause]]
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[[silence]]
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Jerrica Escoto: How are we doing? Good, great, awesome, okay.
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I slept in your bedroom. I should--do a disclaimer for thing poem, um-
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So I have a series of poems that are called my American father and it's poems that I wrote or I written about my relationship with my father during different phases in my life.
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Um--so this is something that I wrote. This is part to that I wrote about five years ago for my dad.
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I slept in your bedroom the night you were in the hospital. Mom woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to fill your space and suddenly I became your substitute on a California King that wasn't big enough for her to feel safety without you.
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Dad, when you sleep, you lie on your side unmoving. I told you that you never needed to waste all that money on such a big bed but you wanted to dream on something bigger.
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You thought maybe sleeping like a king would get you closer to the-
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Jerrica Escoto: Instead, it was only the bed you crawled out of every morning, to a job where white men speak to you much louder than necessary because of your brown skin.
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You told me to remember that not all white folks are racist, but they also expect us to be quiet and when they do, you told me to never be afraid to get loud.
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Why was I always able to scream at strangers before ever whispering I love you to you. The night I found out you had a stroke, I sat on my couch and I remembered all the times I should have hugged you, instead of walking out on you when you tore down your walls as my father.
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And now the tension between us is so thick that not even a stroke can cut through the air.
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I'm scared that I won't learn how to stretch my arms toward you until I have learned how to do it six feet underground.
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Sometimes it's not about asking yourself whether the glass is half full or half empty.
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It's about realizing that there is still sh*t in there to begin with and with every hospital visit I make, I can feel the water in our blood start disappearing.
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I can only see mom's half packed suitcase of her dreaming of vacations that don't include washing dishes or hanging clothes.
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The one time your kids could finally afford to buy you both tickets to Hawaii. You have a stroke 24 hours before your flight and mom called me embarrassed to even ask whether I thought the vacation was still possible.
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I realized then it's not about you being in the hospital again, it was about her also wondering when the hell you two were suppose to get a break.
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The day after you got discharged, I asked mom where you were and she told me you left your crown on your bed site and you went to work.
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All I could do was stand there. As I watched her start unpacking her half empty suitcase and realizing this time, it's not about a fact that there's still sh*t in there to begin with, it's about not being able to go anywhere.
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It's about immigrants, whose dream for something more translates into never catching a break.
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Mother, father I want you to feel like you have the ability to go somewhere. There is no California king soft enough to comfort your calispines.
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I'm afraid you'll never see that working the wa-
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[Speaker 1]: You don't even know what your own shadow looks like in the daytime. I'm tired of you feeling like this is the only way dreams can come true.
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[[Crowd applause]]
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[Speaker 2] Alright Jerrica Escoto, if you just joined us I'm Regie Cabico. Jerrica grew up in the San Diego part in California. I grew up in the East Coast.
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Actually I grew up twenty minutes South of Washington DC. I grew up in Clinton, Maryland, born in Baltimore but in Clinton, so this is my Filipino story growing up.
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By the way are the Filipinos in the house, make some noise!
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[[Crowd applause]]
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Alright excellent, cool cool.
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We were the first Filipino family to move into Clinton Maryland.
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It was so long ago, we came in on carabao.
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I called her entrance, the little nipa hut on the prairie.
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As soon as we moved into our new home, my mom, who's a nurse, a hypochondriac, "I'm very Catholic", started making the sign of the cross with Lysol.
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[Imitates the sound of Lysol spraying]
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I have two sisters named Faith and Charity. My name is Regie. There is no Hope in the family.
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While I was growing up, my mom would say,
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"Reggie! Why do you want to play over the neighbor's house there? They will murder you. Psst. Why don't you practice your piano lessons?"
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See my mom gave me piano lessons because for Filipinos it was like old fashioned karaoke.
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A big hit was "Memory" from "Cats."
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[Imitating his mother] "Reggie come on now! Play me the cats. The cats! The cats! You know the memory! Your titos and titas are here to hear me sing the cats! Psst!"
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Regie Cabico: "Succumb to them. Psst Reggie, Doug, what is this boy. Regie stop playing this video game all the time. Come psst."
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Regie Cabico: Alright, mom okay. [singing] Do do do do do do do do do do do midnight, not a someone is crying. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. I am beautiful dennn. [stops singing] My mom would sing that song off-key while everyone applauded. With a plate of pancit noodles in their lap, sipping Pepsi, inhaling her a Filipina Barbra Streisands.
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Regie Cabico: [[unsure, Filipino dialect spoken?? ]] "You sound like Barbra Streisands."
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Regie Cabico: "Really? You know why it is? It's because every time I play Barbra Streisand's records, her voice is flying out of the speakers, and her voice is going into my body, and my feet become like Barbra Streisand's, my hands become like Barbra Streisand's, and my eyes become like Barbra Streisand's, and I could hear the wind of the beach of Boracay, Philippines, where the sound is like sugar and the water is blue."
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Regie Cabico: [singing]"Memory like the corner of my eye, that's the way we are." Afterward, she wouldn't sing anything else. Just run back into the kitchen, laugh like a smurf, and make more pancit noodles.
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Regie Cabico: At night, my mom would make me and my two younger sisters pray the rosary in front of a four-foot Mary statue standing on a huge green serpent. I called the statue: 'Our Lady of Loch Ness'.
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Regie Cabico: "Reggie, what is the first sorrowful mystery?" Well, mom, they all range from sorrowful to boring, can I please watch Dynasty now?
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Regie Cabico: "Reggie if you watch Dynasty, you will Die-Nasty."
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Regie Cabico: "I look at Romeo del Rosario, he's on the honor roll all the time and going to be full scholarship at St. Christopher's School of the Glorious Ascension and Immaculate Conception of the Sea and Stars. Why cannot you be too like him, anak?"
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Regie Cabico: "You are smart too! You are a star! Why don't you do that, ha?"
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Regie Cabico: But, mom, I don't want to go to all-boy Catholic school. I want to go to performing arts school. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts in D.C.!
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Regie Cabico: "Who's a Duke Ellington? And Washington D.C. is so far and dangerous, somebody will pok-pok your head there! Dad, listen to this boy talk! Don't you know that I make sacrifices for you and sacrifices for you all the time?"
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Regie Cabico: "And you have to stay in all-boys Catholic school, see. The Blessed Mother gives me a sign, see? My hand is shaking with the gift of prophecy."
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Regie Cabico: Mom, that's arthritis. [[laughter]]
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Regie Cabico: I knew about sins, 'cause I went to confession every week. Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I scheduled an audition for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. I already have a dance choreographed, and I need a 3-minute monologue.
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Regie Cabico: I didn't have a monologue, but I took Jennifer Beals' monologue in the movie 'Flashdance'. She really doesn't have a monologue, but I strung all her lines together, and it just comes to under three minutes.
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Regie Cabico: Well, I never made it into the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Instead, I went to Bishop McNamara High School, where for my senior year, I got the title role in the play 'Dracula'. But with all the white make-up on, I look like Yoko Ono. [[laughter]]
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Regie Cabico: But I knew that I could be more than Yoko Ono, so I auditioned for television parts, and I got a call-back to be a serial killer on America's Most Wanted. [[laughter]]
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Regie Cabico: "Regie, that is so good for you! I know that you could be the killer!" So my mom told everyone at church, and they were praying that I would get the killer part.
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Regie Cabico: "Let him be the killer! Let him be the killer! Let him be the killer!"
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Regie Cabico: "Let him be the killer! Let him be the killer!"
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Regie Cabico: And I finally got the part, and everyone said
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Regie Cabico: [mimicking] "Mrs. Cabico, your son was so great on 'America's Most Wanted'."
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Regie Cabico: And my mom would say, "Oh, well, yeah, she was always very mean to me and the sisters." [laughter]
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Regie Cabico: I would be coming home late at night, I would have my first midnight production of 'Tropical Madness', where I played a servant with no lines. I'd be coming home late at night, and I could see my mom pacing back and forth in the window.
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Regie Cabico: "Regie! Where were you? I thought-- you died in a car accident! Psst, come, let me show you something."
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Regie Cabico: And my mom took me to the other side of the room, and I could see this huge light-- It was like maybe the Virgin Mother herself was coming into the living room.
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Regie Cabico: And as I got closer, I saw that it was a lighted glass stand, with all of my awards.
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Regie Cabico: "Mom, what's this?"
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Regie Cabico: "Regie, this is your shrine. I know that you're going to be an actor, and if you're an actor, do not do these soap operas. 'Cause you will lead the people to sin. Why don't you be like Oprah? Regie, you are my H'Oprah!" [laughter]
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Regie Cabico: "Faith, Charity, and H'Oprah!!"
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Regie Cabico: "But mom, I'm just a servant with no lines! I am not the Patron Saint of your immigrant dreams. I am not your 'H'Oprah'." Tururu-dunnnnn. Thank you, Jerica Escoto! [applause]
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Jerrica Escoto: [muffled] Can we do one more?
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Unknown speaker: [muffled] You can do one more.
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Jerrica Escoto: Alright, I'm gonna do one more poem, and then we're gonna open this up to Q&A. Um, so I read you the second part to "My American Father", this is the first part.
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Jerrica Escoto: I've swallowed so much pride that the confines of my stomach only grumble wasted dignity and the word "daddy", in-between desperate attempts of regurgitation.
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Jerrica Escoto: This poem stands juxtaposed with my critical tears in a stunted critical condition, too critical for movement except for when Americanized children don't feel good enough for immigrated fathers, and when immigrated fathers feel like they failed Americanized children.
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Jerrica Escoto: And I wonder, 'Daddy, if someone would have told you it was gonna be this hard, would you have stayed? Because you've aged drastically, and the permanent creases on your forehead only show timelines of your struggle, you work your ass to own up to an American dollar, but you've been slipping as each dollar went to us first and first place should always feel rewarding but as first-generation children, I would've took second. Or third.'
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Jerrica Escoto: 'Or hell, maybe even none at all and daddy.. Amongst America, branding inadequate confidence into your hard work, you forgot to tell me
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[Speaker 1]: Amongst American standards, stapling your immigrant lips shut with deferred dreams, you forgot to teach me the tongues of our ancestors and I'm left exposed,
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with the red and white stripes down my wrist of blue heart and eyes full of shooting star tears because my struggle, daddy, has nothing to do with your golden skin,
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has nothing to do with the third world bending their backs to reach first.
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How could you tell me that I'm not so different from you when I was born birth-marked with privileged and you born nothing but a brown man, born nothing but a yellow man,
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but these days you turn nothing but all black, a shadow, daddy.
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I would've stopped you if it meant you being an American first before my father.
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I would've never let you buy the big houses and fancy cars if it meant you hiding behind them,
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:48.000
if it meant living in the same house with just a floating body with no substance, daddy, you didn't have to throw your bottled dreams into the ocean in hopes it would float onto American soil because now,
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:53.000
our conversations consist of me spitting standards onto your beliefs and piercing your intelligence
00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:58.000
with you don't who ever gave you the chance to speak.
00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:05.000
I'm sorry I was the white man before your daughter. I'm sorry I was another staple on your lips in a conversation to heavy to speak,
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:10.000
I want to say more to you than just bullshit about student loans and Sunday afternoon football games.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:18.000
I want to tell you about all the times my heart has been broken and how it could've been prevented if I had just stayed as daddy's number one, so daddy,
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:24.000
I'm here to take back my title. I'm here to blow love poems down your spine to help you stand taller as my father.
00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:31.000
I'm putting on my [[?]] and racing across country, hitting every flag pole in this nation, replacing the American flag with your picture.
00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:33.000
Let's show 'em daddy.
00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:36.000
Let's show 'em what it's like to really dream.
00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:40.000
[Crowd lightly claps]
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:48.000
[Speaker 2]: Alright Jerricha Escoto, I'm Reggie [[?]]. What we are going to do now is we would like to hear from you.
00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:53.400
I'm gonna ask a few questions to Jerricha and then we would like to open up the dialogue.
00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:16.000
Regie Cabico: Um, I guess, I -- the last time I was here I was saying, if you don't know Filipinos, there's a thing called OA.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.000
Regie Cabico: "Oh Regie, you're so OA." Which means to over act.
00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:26.000
Regie Cabico: There is this big drama that happened -- and you would see it in the Filipino films, they really over act.
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:36.000
Regie Cabico: So there's this internal drama that we're always exhibiting -- and I think in spoken word, that has been the best way to channel my OA.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:53.000
Regie Cabico: There's also a Filipino sense of humor that I think I got, and I think that those two elements are the things that make me spoken word performer -- a spoken word performer.
00:25:53.000 --> 00:26:10.000
Regie Cabico: And then also the fact that growing up, unlike in San Diego, I did not have a lot of Filipino -- there were not a lot of Filipinos around at all, especially growing up in the 70s in southern Maryland.
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:21.000
Regie Cabico: And so you came from a different environment -- I just wanted to see how, how you developed as a spoken word poet, because it's not the typical Filipino form.
00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:28.000
Regie Cabico: You know, usually we're in "Miss Saigon" or, like, on a cooking show, so. [[laughs]]
00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:33.000
[SILENCE]
00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:35.000
Regie Cabico: [[quietly asking someone]] Is the mic on?
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.000
[SILENCE]
00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.000
[[quietly]] Yup.
00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:55.000
[SILENCE]
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:57.000
Jerrica Escoto: Hello? Oh, great.
00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:04.000
Jerrica Escoto: Yeah, so, like Regie mentioned, I grew up in San Diego, and there's a whole bunch of Filipinos in San Diego.
00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:06.000
Jerrica Escoto: We even have something called the Filipino Highway.
00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:08.320
Jerrica Escoto: And I grew up with predominantly --
00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:31.000
Jerrica Escoto: To like really fit into school groups.
00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:36.000
Jerrica Escoto: I did spoken word poetry for the first time when I was 18, so about 11 years ago.
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:43.000
Jerrica Escoto: And it was really a platform where I could start to tell my stories that I didn't realize were really important.
00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:52.000
Jerrica Escoto: The stories of being first generation, having immigrant parents, I think are stories that are really unheard, and they're stories that I think are still rendered invisible right now.
00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:57.000
Jerrica Escoto: And so, spoken word really gives us a platform to kind of proclaim ourselves.
00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:12.000
Jerrica Escoto: When we performed last week, at the national mall for this festival, it was really empowering to be queer and Filipino and talk about my parents who immigrated here while we have the current administration in office.
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:21.000
Jerrica Escoto: So to be feet away from the White House and really proclaim my truth as being first generation Filipino queer was really powerful for me.
00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:30.000
Regie Cabico: And you also brought up the other, other question that I wanted to ask, also with sexual identity, being queer.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:44.000
Regie Cabico: I know from my family -- my sisters have been really supportive of my queer work, but I know that in the older generation it's still like going up against the Spanish Inquisition.
00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:58.000
Regie Cabico: So I feel like being Filipino, not only do you have that immigrant struggle, but then your -- also Catholicism is also its own battle.
00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:11.000
Regie Cabico: And so -- and maybe also being immigrant, because as an immigrant your parents don't want you to be different, they want you to conform as much as possible, and to succeed.
00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:19.000
Regie Cabico: So I just wanted to ask how your work and your family, how that all, your family's story through this.
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:27.000
Jerrica Escoto: Yeah, I, actually, I didn't come out to my parents until maybe 8 years after I had kind of come out to myself.
00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:33.000
Jerrica Escoto: And a lot of that was fear of being ostracized, it was fear that my parents were going to disown me.
00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:34.270
Jerrica Escoto: I was raised to be Catholic.
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:54.000
Jerrica Escoto: The world, uh. [[Regie Cabico laughs]]
00:29:54.000 --> 00:30:04.000
Jerrica Escoto: But when we both got -- we both got confirmed that year, and during confession, we both shared with each other that we confessed to the priest that we were gay.
00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:17.000
Jerrica Escoto: And, the feeling that we had of proclaiming our true identity to a priest and then being told to say 5 Hail Mary's to kind of, like, forgive that, didn't really match with what we were feeling inside.
00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:25.000
Regie Cabico: I can totally relate, and I think that that should be a new poem if you don't have that one. Wow.
00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:43.000
Regie Cabico: So, I want to talk to you -- ask you about -- I started in 1993, 24 years of doing spoken word slam, which, when I started wasn't really a form yet, it was sort of an extension of an open mic.
00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:46.000
Regie Cabico: And now it's evolved a lot.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:54.000
Regie Cabico: I remember being the only gay Filipino poet. I felt like this little superhero.
00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:59.000
Regie Cabico: And people didn't know, "oh my god, this is so different". This was before "Will and Grace" and before internet.
00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:03.000
Regie Cabico: So, and then there was Regie Cabico at the time, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:08.000
Regie Cabico: And now I'm seeing more Filipino spoken word artists.
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:18.000
Regie Cabico: I am so happy to meet you, that you're in D.C. You totally inspire me. Like, I'm writing some intense Jerrica poems.
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:31.000
Regie Cabico: What kind of community do you feel, in the spoken word community of Filipinos? So then also, I think we do what we do because we want to create community and be a part of a community.
00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.000
Regie Cabico: So I wanted to talk about that.
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:42.000
Jerrica Escoto: I do want to say it for those of you who don't know what poetry slam is, it's a competitive form of what we basically just performed for you.
00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.000
Jerrica Escoto: And it's national, and it's international.
00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:59.000
Jerrica Escoto: And the problem with that, is that I ended up -- and I did it for 10 years -- I ended up writing poetry that wasn't about my parents, that wasn't about me being Filipino, because those type of poems didn't score well in national competitions.
00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:01.690
Jerrica Escoto: And so the great part about me partnering with Regie
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:34.000
Speaker 1: Um, is that I can now begin to write about it and feel like I have permission to be that authentic self without feeling like I'm going to be scored or judged, so that kind of took the magic away from it, um, and I'm just now trying to negotiate that part of my identity and me as a writer, and kind of marrying the two and having much more poems that that talk about family, because we don't realize how much it really affects us, um, at all.
00:32:34.000 --> 00:33:53.000
Speaker 2: Um, I also, I have one more last question and then I also just want to turn it over to questions and hear from the audience, either questions or comments. I want to talk about gender identity and gender roles, um, especially because you identify as trans and so, it's really funny because, in the Tagalog language, I remember there's, uh, there's no specific gender, things are not gendered so growing up my parents would say, Reggie! [[?]] gathering her things. So it was always, um, usual for me to find the flow in gender because of the naming of it, and, and if you look at the word bakla which is the term for gay it means the flow between man and woman which is sort of, uh, a gender way of looking at sexual identity, so I really wanna ask you about, um, gender identity growing up. I, I played with dolls, I had a wizard of Oz set, uh, I think people view, that, that I was, I hung out with the girls and I probably would've, you know, been with the girls if I, but then as I grew up, I don't know, I just, it just.
00:33:53.000 --> 00:34:09.840
Speaker 1: I think it's a really interesting question because, in America, somebody's gender isn't synonymous to someone's sexual preference but when it comes to being in the Philippines, uh, we're, I think very used to people kind of crossing those lines and being within a spectrum until you really
00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:32.000
Jerrica Escoto: --almost was like, up until I was finally 23 and came out to my family, it was a huge surprise.
00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:37.000
Jerrica Escoto: And it was almost like, did you-- did you not see me, sort of like, coming into this?
00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:44.000
Jerrica Escoto: 'Cause when it comes to anything gender fluidity, I think it's accepted as long as we kind of don't really talk about what that means as far as what our desires are.
00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:51.000
Jerrica Escoto: Um, so, I do identify as trans but I am not out to my parents yet, and you know that, um, and I'm not--
00:34:51.000 --> 00:34:53.000
Regie Cabico: And that's another coming out, again--
00:34:53.000 --> 00:35:04.000
Jerrica Escoto: Right, right. And it-- it took my parents a really long time to finally accept me being gay, and so, um, I'm kind of like not wanting to really mess with the waters right now.
00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:10.000
Jerrica Escoto: But they see that I have-- I have, like, a boy haircut and I wear boy clothes and they're-- they don't really blink an eye.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:20.000
Jerrica Escoto: Uh, but for me to come home and proclaim, 'no, I would actually like you to use he/him pronouns,' would be a completely different situation.
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:25.000
Jerrica Escoto: So it's almost like, if we just don't talk about it, then it's completely fine.
00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:34.000
Regie Cabico: Um, I would like to trade it over to the audience. There is a microphone here. Thank you, welcome.
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:39.000
Audience Member: My name is Joe Moore, and I'm exposed to some popular culture through my wife from Iloilo.
00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:40.000
Regie Cabico: Oh, okay.
00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:46.000
Audience Member: And she likes the character of Alden on "Eat Bulaga!" because he's so respectful to his mother.
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:56.000
Audience Member: So, that's my questions for each of you. What is your favorite Filipino actor or actress, what is your favorite Filipino movie?
00:35:56.000 --> 00:36:08.000
Audience Member: And, when the Spanish colonized Mexico, then later the Mexican people blamed everything on the Spanish. Why don't the Philippine people blame the Spanish and the Mexican revolution?
00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:12.000
Regie Cabico: Ok, there's a lot of questions... uh--
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:13.000
Jerrica Escoto: Big questions.
00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:22.000
Regie Cabico: Who's my favorite Filipino actor? Besides Lea Solonga, besides the cast of Miss Saigon --
00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:29.430
Regie Cabico: There's not a whole lot to choose from, um, unfortunately. I love Wilma Khan, so -- [[??]]
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:39.000
Regie Cabico: As far as my favorite filipino movie, there's a film called "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros"
00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:43.000
Regie Cabico: Which is -- uh -- a young gay filipino
00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:45.000
Regie Cabico: coming of age story
00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:48.000
Regie Cabico: So, I, uh, think it's a beautiful film
00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:51.000
Regie Cabico: And then, Um, as far as we blame the Spanish
00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:55.000
Regie Cabico: Why do we blame the Spanish? We do! We blame everyone!
00:36:55.000 --> 00:37:01.000
[[Applause]]
Regie Cabico: We blame everyone! Just give me a globe, and I'll just like -- you know
00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:05.000
Regie Cabico: spin it and "We blame them. We blame them" I mean like really, Um
00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:12.000
Regie Cabico: Every culture has like been on top of us. We're at the bottom of some culture
00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:16.000
Jerrica Escoto: --Yeah, I don't think its a matter of --
Regie Cabico: Yay to colonization!
Jerrica Escoto: [laughs] colonization.
00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:20.000
Jerrica Escoto: I don't think it's a matter of us not acknowledging or blaming the Spanish
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:25.000
Jerrica Escoto: for colonization, for colonizing us, I think that the Philippine culture is really invisible because
00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.000
Jerrica Escoto: I think we like to stay underneath the radar, right? Because when I came here to the States
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:32.000
Jerrica Escoto: my parents are like "We don't want us to do anything that's like too loud"
00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:35.000
Jerrica Escoto: They don't want us to -- we just -- they want to be in America, make enough money
00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.000
Jerrica Escoto: to take care of their families and they just want to glide through
00:37:39.000 --> 00:37:43.000
Jerrica Escoto: any kind of activism, any kind of noise, that kind of like puts center toward us
00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:46.000
Jerrica Escoto: my dad doesn't like it when I speak up about Trump, because
00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:49.000
Jerrica Escoto: he doesn't want me to be against the grain, right?
00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:55.000
Jerrica Escoto: but, I think, what i think is really hurtful, of the Philippines, and Philippine Culture is
00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:56.000
Jerrica Escoto: I even if you watch the Filipino channel now
00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:01.000
Jerrica Escoto: I said in my first poem, a lot of it resembles American Pop Culture
00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:07.000
Jerrica Escoto: Because I think we are just so lost, and I think its centuries of colonization, it's centuries of people saying
00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:14.000
Jerrica Escoto: the types of food that we make, isn't actually true Filipino, it's influenced from the Chinese or Thai.
00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:20.000
Jerrica Escoto: There's nothing I feel that people feel is really ours and I think what's important for us now
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:23.000
Jerrica Escoto: to reclaim what's ours now and today, and um, that I don't think it's necessarily
00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:29.000
Jerrica Escoto: people are not blaming. I think that they're just tired. and I think that they're just tired of trying to be
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:33.990
Jerrica Escoto: visible. And it's much easier, I think, to just go through life and take care of our families
00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:42.000
Regie Cabico: So--
Jerrica Escoto: Generational? Is that what you said? Yes.
00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:47.000
Jerrica Escoto: Yeah.
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:57.000
Regie Cabico: Um... I also just wanna added-- uh, add-- that, um, Filipino food is getting popular now and
00:38:57.000 --> 00:39:05.000
Regie Cabico: talking about invisibility, like the food hasn't reached a sort of mainstream, the way that Thai food has.
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:11.000
Regie Cabico: And I feel like there's so many restaurants that are... changing... the dish,
00:39:11.000 --> 00:39:15.000
Regie Cabico: that people are not knowing what the original dish is.
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:22.000
Regie Cabico: So-- Um, not to talk about food but, it's just sort of in, how we're presenting ourselves,
00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:27.000
Regie Cabico: I wonder how we're representing ourselves authentically.
00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:34.000
Regie Cabico: And, how people really-- really see us now. I'm-- I'm questioning that.
00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:37.000
Jerrica Escoto: I think it's a good question because I don't think people are seeing us now.
00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:43.000
Jerrica Escoto: Um, in D.C. I did ask where we have, like, Filip-- at least D.C., I know Maryland and Virginia has more--
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:48.000
Jerrica Escoto: But there's two restaurants that people told me about, which is, I think, Bad Saint and Purple Patch-- maybe? [[yup]]
00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:55.000
Jerrica Escoto: And I'm [[??, Filipino term]], and we're known to be the best cooks in the Phillippines, so I take food very seriously. [[Regie Cabico laughs]]
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:57.000
Jerrica Escoto: And I take restaurants very seriously.
00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:02.000
Jerrica Escoto: And I haven't gone out to go get Filipino food, if I want Filipino food I'll actually make it in my own home.
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:07.000
Jerrica Escoto: But the thing with it, Purple Patch too, to me, seems very mainstream
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:12.000
Jerrica Escoto: because that was, I feel like, the best way to cater to all people to come in.
00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:22.000
Jerrica Escoto: But food is really important, I think, in our culture in general
Jerrica Escoto: Like when my grandmother was passing, and literally dying in the next room,
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:27.000
Jerrica Escoto: My dad had an adobo cookoff, with me and him, and our family had to vote for which was the best adobo.
00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:29.000
Jerrica Escoto: And so-- and so I think it's a way for us to heal, it's really ingrained,
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:35.000
Jerrica Escoto: I think not just in Filipino culture, but brown culture, immigrant culture, in general. Food is like, really important.
00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.000
Jerrica Escoto: And food I think, is what we end up passing down to our generations after us.
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:41.650
Regie Cabico: And it's that immigrant food that I feel that
00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:51.000
Regie Cabico: -- of the authenticity of really immigrant Filipino food.
00:40:51.000 --> 00:40:59.000
Regie Cabico: And I think that it's just something to think about. Yes?
00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:04.000
Audience Member: Hi. Hi, thank you all so much. I just had a quick question.
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:15.000
Audience Member: You all have been sort of touching on this, but could you speak more about the art of spoken word, especially as it relates to migration and anti -- not anti -- cross-generational sort of migration.
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.000
Audience Member: You've definitely talked -- touched on it, Jerrica, but maybe a little more, Regie?
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:28.000
Audience Member: And also where can we find your work? Do you all have any chapbooks out? Do you all have videos? Where can we access your amazing work?
00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:36.000
Regie Cabico: I have -- my poems are online. I don't have a specific one collection, but all of my videos are out there.
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:46.000
Regie Cabico: I would say a lot of them are pretty raunchy, so you wanna hide them and keep them away from the kids. I'm definitely PG-13 this morning.
00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:54.000
Regie Cabico: But I do want to commend the Smithsonian for allowing -- there's no censorship. They just want us to tell our story authentically.
00:41:54.000 --> 00:42:13.000
Regie Cabico: As far as spoken word in the Filipino culture, there is the oratory Balagtasan kind of "debate style" of oral oratory.
00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:27.000
Regie Cabico: But the art of slam -- I don't know that there are slams in the Philippines. I don't even know if there are any. I doubt that there is. I hope that there would be.
00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:41.000
Regie Cabico: So I feel like what I'm drawing from is just my dad's humor, and I'm drawing from just the storytelling that is just inherent.
00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:49.000
Regie Cabico: And I think that's probably, in all, the tackle that happens every Saturday night.
00:42:49.000 --> 00:42:49.880
Jerrica Escoto: And poetry --
00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:00.000
Jerrica Escoto: 'Cause he got tired of going to literary readings and people not showing up.
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:15.000
Jerrica Escoto: And him and his very capitalistic mind basically was like, "what can we do to get people to show up? Let's make it a competition." Right? But we're doing poems that have to do about abuse, that have to do about mental health, that have to do about trauma.
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:30.000
Jerrica Escoto: Um, and it's almost even more traumatizing for us to allow five strangers to judge what those poems actually are. Which is why I said in my full slam career, I always say it was the abusive relationship I kept coming back to because I would say, "I'm finished with slam."
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:40.000
Jerrica Escoto: I told Regie last month. I was like "I'm finished with slam, I'm not doing any more competitions." He said, "there's an Asian slam at the end of July." And I said, "okay, you can sign me up."
Regie Cabico: [[laughter]]
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:59.000
Jerrica Escoto: Um, but I haven't written a lot of poetry about what it means to be Filipino and queer and that's something that I want to explore now. Um, you can find - if you google me - you can find my work. A lot of it is my older poetry. I do have a book out with another poet in San Diego. I have business cards so I can give you one before I leave.
00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:18.000
Regie Cabico: Um, Verbal Fire is produced by the Smithsonian. It's part of the Asian American lit fest. It's the last weekend in July - the last Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Friday from 6 to 8. It's a free event at Dupont Underground called Verbal Fire. So you'll see 24 years of slam from Beau Sia to Jerrica Escoto.
00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:27.000
Regie Cabico: And I think our final question --
Unknown Speaker: It's not our final question. I just wanted, because you asked about spoken word and poetry and Filipino Americans and migration.
00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:51.000
Unknown Speaker: Regie's probably, like, our biggest one when it comes to spoken word. And really, a legend by now, you know? He's been at it for a long time. But before Regie and, I come from San Fransisco so we had the Kearney Street Workshop. You know, look at works by Al Robles. These are the contemporaries of the writer Jessica Hagedorn and Norman Jayo.
00:44:51.000 --> 00:45:03.240
Unknown Speaker: They kind of started with that sort of beat poetry. Those were the people that preceded Regie and that, you know, and now you Jessica. But it's not in the Filipino culture, it's more of a
00:45:11.000 --> 00:45:14.000
Audience Member: Filipinos just want to be in the radar? No, we don't.
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:16.000
Audience Member: I think that's very generational, maybe for our parents.
00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:19.000
Audience Member: But, look -- you guys are out here. You're doing something.
00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:24.000
Audience Member: And the people that I know, especially Filipino-Americans in California?
00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:28.000
Audience Member: We're out there. We've been out there since the Civil Rights.
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:31.000
Audience Member: So, we didn't just want to be in the -- under the radar.
00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:35.000
Audience Member: And we have a history -- we have a colonized history.
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:37.000
Audience Member: We also have a history of fighting.
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Audience Member: That's why you look at the Iwo Jima -- it will not say that it's a war. It says "a Philippine insurgency".
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Audience Member: Thank you.
00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:55.000
Regie Cabico: Yeah, I also just wanted to say that, especially in the Bay Area, Filipinos know how to mobilize.
00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:00.000
Regie Cabico: And it's just from like the great-great-grandparents all the way down to the babies -- they are marching.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:10.000
Regie Cabico: So, that is beautiful, and that is something. Unfortunately, I did not grow up to experience that.
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:12.000
Regie Cabico: So, I think this our last --
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Audience Member: Last one? Okay. My name is Rudy, thank you so much.
00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:22.000
Audience Member: I had a question about -- it's a question related to sports, spoken word, and hip hop.
00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:30.000
Audience Member: Bamboo and the Blue Scholars, they have this song about Manny Pacquiao. Manny Pacquiao was this iconic figure for them and their hip hop.
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:36.000
Audience Member: As Filipino/Filipina/Filipinx artists, what are y'all's thoughts on Manny?
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Audience Member: Does he ever come up in your poetry?
00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:45.000
Audience Member: Is he an opportunity to be engaged in a conversation of critique?
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:55.000
Audience Member: Given his ideas and his thoughts on Christianity -- very conservative Christianity and very conservative, homophobic, gender-normative ideas on what marriage means --
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Audience Member: how do y'all reconcile that or talk about that or critique that?
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:04.000
Jerrica Escoto: I wasn't sure if you were here, but in my first poem I brought up Manny Pacquiao.
00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:15.000
Jerrica Escoto: And I talked about how, when it comes to Philippine news, all we ever really hear about in mainstream media is either Manny Pacquiao or natural disasters that's going on in the Philippines.
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Jerrica Escoto: I think, for me personally, and --
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Speaker 1: My parents would have a different view. I feel empowered anytime I see any philipino on main stream TV bceause we're not really on main stream TV. There not really there not really any philippine actors or actresses who are on like main stream TV or Netflix or Hulu Tv shows. Um so a part of me has pride in the fact that there is someone who's representing the Philippines who can become a world champion. The things that have to do with Christianity and the parts that are in direct conflict of who I am and my actual identity. Um I'm in more of a space where I can honor someone else's ideas and thoughts if it isn't in agreement with my own values. As long as it's not violent and as long as it's not disrespectful. Um so I can respect Manny cause he's from the Phillippines since it it makes sense my parents both from the Philippines and both Catholic. I think that if their two children didn't come out they would still feel very strongly about being against gay um gay people and gay marriage. Um and it took them having children who were gay and relaizing that the love for them was much more paramount than that. Um to kind of go through that? So it's a great question because I think it's a question that at least for me i've never really thought about because I know all the controversy that comes with it, but I also have a lot of pride in his visibility. And being Philippino.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not a fan of Manny Pakal, but I also just it's not my sport you know. I just watch men's gymnastics so.
Speaker 1: Alright, thank you. Please join me in giving them a round of applause. So, thank you and un at 2:00 we'll be having a panel discussion called "A Right to the City".
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Production Staff: And we'll have with us folks from 1BC; we'll have Andy Shallal from Busboys and Poets.
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Production Staff: So, if you could tweet out, call your friends, let them know there's about 10 more minutes, and we'll be back. Thank you.
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