Micaela Tobin, aka White Boy Scream, is an LA-based opera singer like no other. Her artistic practice is rooted in the histories of human society and desired freedom from colonialism. The mix of lyricism, drone, experimental sounds, and eerie visual elements make her performances deep and mesmerizing.
In her new two-track EP Body Island, White Boy Scream invited iconic electronic producer Baseck, she also teamed up with French videographer Veronique Caye. The result is a 20-minute poignant roller-coaster with two audio pieces, where the highs scream and the lows mourn, all the while calling for resilience in the face of the Western war machine, “we cannot get used to this, we cannot give up, and we must continue fighting”, as Tobin explains. And adding striking accompanying visuals, including an almost mystique video, as a visual retreat for viewers of the strong and emotional audio piece it illustrates. White Boy Scream answered some of NBHAP’s questions about her touring habits, her artistic vision, and her diasporic experience as first-generation Filipina in the USA.
Body Island
Nadia Says: White Boy Scream, you had a few shows on tour recently how do you prepare for touring and being on stage?
Photo by Kaelyn Higgs
Micaela Tobin: To prepare for a tour I generally just practice my set daily, make sure to take my vitamins, and get plenty of sleep leading up to departing – especially when traveling abroad. Since my instrument is my body, it’s super important that I’m healthy and well-rested so that I can handle the jet lag. I also have a whole warmup and warm-down routine, as well as remedies and procedures if I get sick or accidentally blow my voice out on tour. As a voice teacher, I’m very interested and invested in vocal health! During my shows, I like to have a loose structure of points and pieces that I want to hit, but I definitely leave room for myself to respond to the energy of the space and the audience. Improvisation is a tenant of my practice and I really enjoy leaving certain things to how I’m feeling in the moment.
The second part of your EP Body Island is accompanied by the video to the song “Break Me”. And can you tell us about where you filmed it?
We filmed the majority of it at this beautiful 15th-century castle in central Italy over the summer, while I was in residency there. The fellowship program is called Civitella Ranieri and it has been going since the early 90’s. The castle, of course, is much older. French director, author, and video artist Veronique Caye was also an artist at the fellowship during this time, so she graciously agreed to direct and film the scenes at the castle. We filmed everything over the course of an hour or so one windy night towards the end of our residency period. The entire experience was like a dream!
Being in Community
Do you identify as a first-generation Filipina, and what might it mean to you and your community?
Yes, I am first-generation Filipino-American (FilAm) and the meaning of this identity is ever-evolving for me, as I’m sure it is for others. As an artist who will have (hopefully) many chapters in my life, I think that my relationship to my culture, to my heritage, will ebb and flow as I grow older and have new experiences. For instance, when I was young, the culture wasn’t something that I thought “about” or “around”, I was just experiencing it in the moment and in the day-to-day small activities, such as eating adobo with my grandparents, or going to the Filipino market, or to their church on special holidays. However, now, my relationship with my Filipino-ness is something I look at through an expanded lens, taking into account all that I have learned about history, geopolitics, and psychology. I am also in community with other FilAm artists who make work about/through a diasporic lens, and I learn so much through them.
How do you feel being part of a diaspora, do you long for your ancestors’ land?
I think that feeling of longing is just embedded in the diasporic experience. For me, personally, since I was born in the United States, I think that ‘longing’ is more abstract, in the sense that my heart hurts over the political circumstances that led to so many having to leave the Philippines in order to seek ‘a better life’ in the States, and all that gets lost in that migration and that assimilation. There is a longing there for something that I will probably never know! But there is also a strange beauty in that poetry that I can appreciate, or rather use, in the art.
The title of my EP Body Island refers to the concept that those of us in the diaspora carry our ancestral knowledge and sense of home in our own bodies – since we did not physically grow up there.
Do you feel you belong in the USA?
I feel very at home in Los Angeles. I am grateful to be born and raised here, and that I have the ability to live and work here. It is a very special place with so many layers and dimensions of different cultures. The work I have been making the last handful of years honors the stories and sentiments of migration within my own family, and serves as rituals towards collective healing.
Would you like to comment on the situation in the USA right now?
Wow! This question would take an essay worth of writing to answer. I’ll just say this: Free Palestine and Arms Embargo NOW.
Some of your work shows solidarity with the Palestinian people. Do you feel a connection because your ancestors’ home was colonised too?
Absolutely. All of our histories are intertwined, as is our liberation. No one is free until Palestine is free.
As an artist, do you feel it is possible to create art that is not political?
I do not believe any art is free of being political. Being ‘apolitical’ is in fact a political statement – one of privilege.
No one is free until Palestine is free.
Between Opera and Underground
How do you reconcile being part of the musical underground, while also being an opera singer – opera usually being a Euro-centric art form appreciated by wealthier communities, than say noise and drone music?
This is why I have made the first-ever operas about precolonial Philippine mythology: to honor my ancestors through an arena that has been historically Euro-centric, as well as utilizing experimental sounds to further subvert and push the traditions of the genre forward.
What do you wish for your art to bring to the world and to your audience?
I wrote this EP to shake myself out of dissociating from the suffering in the world around me. It is a call to those of us living in the Western world, the belly of the beast, to wake up and find ways to be a part of global liberation. I hope it does the same for the listeners.
You can find more releases and performances by White Boy Scream on Bandcamp and Instagram, including the spellbinding Almost Songs of the Bakunawa stream.