The song "Hawak" tells the story of a young couple, Jerico and Angel, whose love is cut short by a violent murder. As the song progresses, it reveals that the couple was shot by unidentified men in motorcycles in a dark alley. The lyrics question whether violence and forgetting of rights are acceptable, alluding to the problem of extrajudicial killings in the country. The song leaves the listener wondering if true love is a rightful cost for dying and if the justice system has become blind. It serves as a protest against the failures of the government to provide explanations for murder incidents during the corrupt drug war.
The song "Hawak" tells the story of a young couple, Jerico and Angel, whose love is cut short by a violent murder. As the song progresses, it reveals that the couple was shot by unidentified men in motorcycles in a dark alley. The lyrics question whether violence and forgetting of rights are acceptable, alluding to the problem of extrajudicial killings in the country. The song leaves the listener wondering if true love is a rightful cost for dying and if the justice system has become blind. It serves as a protest against the failures of the government to provide explanations for murder incidents during the corrupt drug war.
The song "Hawak" tells the story of a young couple, Jerico and Angel, whose love is cut short by a violent murder. As the song progresses, it reveals that the couple was shot by unidentified men in motorcycles in a dark alley. The lyrics question whether violence and forgetting of rights are acceptable, alluding to the problem of extrajudicial killings in the country. The song leaves the listener wondering if true love is a rightful cost for dying and if the justice system has become blind. It serves as a protest against the failures of the government to provide explanations for murder incidents during the corrupt drug war.
The song "Hawak" tells the story of a young couple, Jerico and Angel, whose love is cut short by a violent murder. As the song progresses, it reveals that the couple was shot by unidentified men in motorcycles in a dark alley. The lyrics question whether violence and forgetting of rights are acceptable, alluding to the problem of extrajudicial killings in the country. The song leaves the listener wondering if true love is a rightful cost for dying and if the justice system has become blind. It serves as a protest against the failures of the government to provide explanations for murder incidents during the corrupt drug war.
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Listening through the initial verses of the song, I thought this has to be another song
talking about a forbidden love, how two lovers are separated because of having the right love at the wrong time. As the song progresses, it grew darker. Accompanied with the progression of instrumental ascension, the storyline of the song narrates the painful experience of the other party of losing his partner in a violent, vicious and unjust manner. The song opened as a narrative of a young and innocent love, facing their own battles against critics, societal norm and the social construct that it had curated. Most of the times, our society views young love as trivial, superficial and halfhearted—without considering the perspective of those subjected in this type of love. It was so mature how the writer of the song mentioned that even though they are faced with criticisms and denunciation, the lovers were unfazed and already understood that this was already their reality. In the continuation of the verses of the song, it chronicles how the boy started working to provide not only for the girl’s education, because she said she wanted to go back to school, but also to provide for the girl’s family. In this section we see how genuine love is expressed. This became the foundation of their relationship, proving everyone wrong about their notion on young love. The next verses of the song narrate a sudden, tragic turn. It unfolded how the boy was helplessly holding the cold, bloody corpse of the girl, moments after being shot himself. His anxiousness and skepticism grew as to why this gruesome incident happened. This happened when the couple decided to walk the streets of a dark alley, and got shot by unidentified man in motorcycles. In the lines “Karahasan ba ang sagot//Karapatan ba ay limot” which can be translated to “is violence the answer//are all rights forgotten” was a perfect statement to describe the underlying problem of the country in extrajudicial killings. The song ended in a very miserable line: At the end, they will be buried side-by-side True love cut short With the slamming of their coffins Is justice blind (bleeding)? And drowning in blood?
The writer of the song left us all in wonder, is true, genuine and innocent love a rightful cost for dying? Is this how blind the justice system has become? I view the song—apart from it being a literary masterpiece—as a protest. This is what happens when facts and art meet. It becomes a beautiful protest. Hawak or Hold in English, is a song depicting juvenile romance turned into tragedy by then 21-year-old Jerico Camitan and 17- year-old Angel Fernandez. The romance between the two started when they were 17 and 13 respectively. In an account, Jerico’s friends told the news that all it took for Jerico to fall in love was for Angel to walk by. The song took the persona of the orphans, it is a song that asks many difficult questions. In a story told by Jerico’s friends, they were found lifeless along Gumamela Street in Quezon city, with Jerico laying on the street with a sign on his chest that portrays him as an “animal” and a “drug dealer”. This is only one of the many accounts of death, or if I would properly word it, murder, that is done under the corrupt system of drug war. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit records this tragic case as “Death Under Investigation” which is a euphemism used to express the failure of the government authorities to provide just and acceptable explanations to this animal-like murder incidents happening in places all throughout the country. As I dive deeper into the history of the song in my eagerness to learn more about its context, I found out that the entire album is an ambitious endeavor of various artist to create a voice about this problematic system. The song speaks for itself. It’s lines and verses will have much more impact than the words I put in this paper, but one thing is for sure; for the people fighting this injustice that Jerico and Angel have met, the battle continues. The world will still revolve amidst this chaos, the sun will soon rise to illuminate the darkness, and justice will prevail as long as you do not give up on it.
