Jerms Turns Environmental Grief into Mythic Song on “Party Gubat”
With “Party Gubat,” Jerms transforms environmental advocacy into a mystical sonic ritual, blending music, memory, and conservation into an anthem for the forests and the communities that protect them.
Words Randolf Maala-Resueño
Photos courtesy of Locked Down Entertainment & Mirrorball Asia
May 15, 2026
There is something incantatory about Jerms’ latest release. “Party Gubat” goes beyond auditory; it asks to be entered, like a forest trail at dusk, alive with spirits, memory, and warning.
Released alongside a music video directed by Paolo Moreno of Antevasin Digital and created in partnership with Forest Foundation Philippines, the project expands beyond the boundaries of a conventional single. It is part music video, part invocation, part ecological dreamscape.
Known previously as a member of The Ransom Collective, Jerms has steadily shaped a solo identity rooted in intimacy and folklore-like storytelling. But “Party Gubat” feels like her most fully realized artistic world yet. Its mythology emerges not through fantasy alone, but through reverence for the living world.
Artist Jerms
The song pulses with elemental imagery: earth meeting sea, bodies dissolving into landscape, voices merging into collective chant. Lyrics such as “Ikaw ang lupa at ako ang dagat” evoke not romance, but interdependence—a cosmology where humans are inseparable from the ecosystems that sustain them.
Even its refrain, “Humiyaw, sumigaw, lumaya’t bumitaw,” feels less like a ritual release.
Jerms describes the track as “a celebration, but also a call,” shaped by her encounters with Indigenous communities protecting ancestral lands. That grounding gives the project emotional weight. Mysticism here is remembrance, not escapism.
Visually, Moreno’s direction appears to embrace that same ethos.
By merging documentary textures with dreamlike imagery, the “Party Gubat” video positions the forest as both backdrop and as living participant. “Because it’s not just about the forest—it’s about remembering that we’re part of it,” Moreno explains.
The timing is significant. In an era where environmental collapse often feels abstract or overwhelming, “Party Gubat” reframes conservation through feeling and instruction. It invites audiences to understand nature intellectually while reconnecting with it emotionally, spiritually, even mythologically.
More than a release, “Party Gubat” arrives as an atmosphere: immersive, ecstatic, and quietly urgent. In Jerms’ hands, the forest becomes both sanctuary and siren song—calling listeners back to something older, wilder, and deeply human.
For more information, visit Forest Foundation Philippines andPETA Theater.
