Ili-Ili para sa mga biktima ng Ondoy  

(Lullaby for the victims of Ondoy)

*For Two Singers, Mixer, Sampler, DFAM, Dreadbox Erebus, Percussion, and Shadow Play  
 
September 24, 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of Ondoy (Typhoon Ketsana), one of the biggest storms of my life and among the top of the list of this phenomena's ever-increasing destructiveness. Ili-Ili is built on stories I heard from survivor's mouths during my time as a relief worker in the hardest hit areas. This work revolves around the story of a baby found alive floating in a Styrofoam cooler down a river the day after the storm. Ili-ili tries to re-imagine the final moments of the person who put the child in the only thing he or she could find before they perished. 
 
I was inspired to use the lullaby because of its power to transcend both its own words and the situation in which they are uttered. On the surface, the text of Ili-ili are nonsensical and silly but as the sound of Trust to the child's ears - the mother or father placing the baby in the cooler - it is the most powerful conveyor of safety and security. Through this use of the mother's voice as a sensible vessel, carrying the listener to the supersensible, I evoke the two personas in the song: the live mother and the ghost mother. A sample of a native speaker of the Hiligaynon dialect singing the lullaby symbolizes the live mother. 
 
This allegorical use of the lullaby also tries to conjure prayer in that the performance becomes the confluence of audible presence and inaudible significance. 
 
It is dedicated to Muelmar Magallanes who saved thirty lives that night and lost his own while trying for his thirty-first. 
 

Text Translation

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Ili-Ili tulog anay                                               Sleep little one

Waay diri imong Nanay                                     Mother is not here

Kadto tienda bakal papay                                  She went to the store to buy bread

Ili-Ili tulog anay                                               Sleep little one 

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