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gikan sa yutang natawhan ★★★
(coming from my home)
AninoKo is a Bay Area hardcore punk band comprised of five Filipino immigrant members: Rupert, the vocalist and frontman, Jing, the bassist, Noah, the first guitarist, Loi, second guitarist, and Von, the drummer. We got a front-row seat to one of their practices, followed by an enlightening interview. Keep reading to hear insights from these veterans of the Bay Area punk scene!
How did you come up with AninoKo (ah-nee-no-koh)? ★★★
Loi: Anino means shadow, and Ko means me. Anino ko is...my shadow.
Jing: And the explanation would be-
Rupert: You're- masyado ka! (you're too much!)
(All laughing)
Loi: It's like- AninoKo- it's like you know, we're here (the U.S.) but our shadow is always gonna be the other side of us, like the Philippines.
Jing: Like the shadow is always with us no matter what.
Rupert: The shadow of our ancestors.
All: There are a lot of meanings to the word.
Why the Bay Area? ★★★
Jing: It's home. Homebase.
Rupert: And there's so many filipinos here. We like filipino everything!. Like I watch TFC so much, I canceled Netflix. There's no reason, no one's watching it in my house! So... but that's how AninoKo formed. And then Wax joined us when he was in Switzerland.
Noah (Wax): I was already a fan.
Jing: Yeah he was friends with Loi. Our baby.
Rupert: Yeah and he would play our songs. And I was like "Dude that's perfect!" He wrote- during the pandemic- 2 of the songs we play now. He just played it for us, he wrote them and we said 'dude let's practice,' and after 2022 we practiced and we played a show at Stay Gold Deli in Oakland. Philippines is the goal.
collage by
millicent villacastin & leo pickard
What do you want your listeners to take away from your music? ★★★
Rupert: There's strugglers outside our community here. There's struggles beyond what is trending, that other people are focused on, and are constantly working on behind the scenes. And to take away from that, sometimes exploring those different worlds, scenes, situations, can enrich you, shock you, can make you feel dismayed, but it's all part of reality.
Jing: ...That connectivity to seeing another Pinoy. If they are happy, they get emotional for seeing us brown Pinoys, that's kind of like our gift to them y'know this is one of our tools... "I'm feeling shitty but I know who's playing this weekend... I'm gonna go there." Right? That for us, it reaches out to the community, the kids, and that's, for me, that's how I try to reach out and tell people... [to reach out] with Pinoys, that are here because of the migration form or from something. And we stick to our tagalog lyrics, and we're not gonna back out.
Noah: Actually, like you said, the connectivity. As a Filipino, I came here in '98, with nothing, no friends, all by myself. Seeing other Filipinos, I mean it just makes me giggle. Happy. But forreal, that's my two cents. I was just happy, if not playing with this guy, just to be with these guys, y'know hanging out, hanging out with these guys. It's just like a family.
What impact did Al Robles have on AninoKo? ★★★
Rupert: I used to see Al Robles a lot, on Geary because I used to live on Mason and Post, so I used to be on Geary and Post a lot. And I would see him at the Bayanihan center, at Manilatown. The first poem I ever read in public was from Rapping with 10,000 Caribous, and it was an excerpt. First thing I ever read in public that wasn't my own. And after that I kind of wrote like him in that sense and I evolved later on. For me, he was an elder, he was part of the I-Hotel struggle, and he used to be seen everywhere in the community before he died. Everywhere. We'd just see him everywhere, at every event.
Jing: Every district.
Rupert: Japantown, here (Tenderloin), everywhere. You'd just see him.
Jing: Writing that song, Anino ni Al Robles, was a tribute to him.
we made a zine out of this interview!
pick up a copy soon at select bookstores in SF and upcoming AninoKo shows.
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