Disobedient Performance in Han Han’s “Babae Ka”

Abstract

Abstract This article seeks to introduce readers to the artist Han Han, whose identification as a first-generation immigrant woman, nurse, and rapper highlights a unique contribution to Filipino Canadian critique of colonial and racial relations in Canada. I examine the 2019 music video for Han Han’s single, “Babae Ka,” and consider how it reimagines local, global, and transnational forms of queerness and feminist power. How does this audio-visual piece reproduce and respond to conversations around diaspora, Indigeneity, and gendered forms of labour? Moving between the sonic and the visual, I argue that Han Han enacts a critical practice of “disobedient performance” as she plays with a vernacular understanding of Philippine gender and sexuality and explores the nuances of a performative construction of femininity encompassed in the term “babae” (Tagalog for “woman”).