The Poetry Of Home

Filipino-American singer-songwriter Labit beauteously bridges memory and melody. His new single 'MANGOES AND RICE' emanates the quiet strength that comes from staying true to one's roots.

- WORDS INDRAN PARAMASIVAM PHOTO ERICA HERNANDEZ

SOME SONGS FEEL LIKE POSTCARDS. Others, like prayers. ‘MANGOES AND RICE’ is both: a soft, shimmering ode to the places and people that raised its maker, Stephen Ordonez. Born second-generation Filipino in California, he describes his upbringing as a mosaic of scents, sounds, and rituals that continue to shape him. These formative experiences shaped his destiny. It is, in large part, why he makes music under the moniker, Labit.

“Being Filipino, at an individual and familial level, is such a big thing in my life,” he says. “It's remembering the food my mom would make—chicken adobo, pancit, lumpia—and how every month, we'd visit family on both sides. Those are the memories that built me,” he tells me.

It's in those seemingly ordinary gestures that identity roots itself. For Labit, memory isn't an aesthetic device. It's sustenance. “Whenever times got hard,” he adds, “we relied on how we were raised to get us through.”

That sense of grounding pulses through his music, as an inheritance carried not as nostalgia, but as strength.