They Can’t Erase Me

Micaela Tobin, White Boy Scream, is a professor at Cal Arts in the VoiceArts department, specializing in contemporary opera and experimental vocals. She explores ideas of pre-colonial mythology from the Philippines and cuts up, analyzes, and stitches together her vocal recordings electronically to create a ritualistic experience and tell stories about the diaspora. Tobin’s work is often described as “hypnotic” and “paralyzingly beautiful,” after watching her live performance on December 10, 2022, I would like to add that it continues to burrow into the mind and is entirely unforgettable. 

The sounds followed me for weeks, even months after. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Maybe it struck a particular ancestral string within me, but it felt like the experience completely changed me, and there was no going back. 

Stunned by the performance, I connected deeply and was unexpectedly in tears every now and then. 

Tobin sang amongst her family members; some played the organ and recited recurring words on the podium. Her aunts' support exemplifies the importance of family involvement within the culture. The fact that it occurred in the incredibly resonant First Congregational Church of Los Angeles was equal parts magical and powerful in ways that felt like she was taking cultural traditions and using them to express ancestral trauma. I was genuinely moved, and the performance brought my imagination to the historical atrocities in the Philippines.

I felt fortunate to have lived in the same lifetime as Tobin, let alone hear her perform in a place of worship for most, which had transformed a place of healing and expression of ancestral trauma and mythologies.

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Watch the full performance here: