By Erin Pangilinan

Cross-posted from Philippine News.

Like the Long March EP brought the Seattle feel in songs like “Southside Revival,” Blue Scholars, FilAm emcee Geologic (Geo) and Iranian American producer Sabza Mohajerjasbi (Sabzi) give audiences refreshing sounds of islands in their new EP, OOF!.

The name Blue Scholars is word play on the term “blue collar,” referring to workers who early hourly wages for manual labor. Their intellectual flare is displayed in Geo's lyrics and Sabzi's carefully crafted beats.

In “New People,” Geologic remains consistent in his clever lyrics about the struggles between socioeconomic classes, like the average Joe working pay-check to paycheck.

“If apocalypse is near, never fear/
Lapu-Lapu with the spear…
Gotta whole lot of poems and I scrolled them on a bus stop/
Turn em into gold like Manny with the gloves, or/
Midas with the touch, I told them not to fuss/

Got my mind on my money but the money’s not enough.”

OOF! is composed of six tracks with vocals from Geologic and four instrumental tracks. The opening track “Bananas” as well as throughout the EP, uses indigenous and native instruments, particularly percussion, to give the island feel and personality to the compilation.

Audiences can hear and see that OOF!’s sound reflects the experience in lyrics spit by the emcee. Geo, a.k.a. George Quibuyen, from Seattle, Washington recounts his childhood in Hawai’i while his father worked on the Navy base in Honolulu. Geo claims both a Hawai’i and the mainland, particularly the West Coast as home. Geo talks about his trip back to Hawai’i that spurred the inspiration for “HI-808,” which guided the rest of the EP.

“There are actually places that don’t exist anymore. Some of these places have been developed and redeveloped. That was kind of the seed of everything, this place is still home to me.”

In “HI-808” he recounts this experience in both settings:

“And I came with an accent, I said, ‘howzit?’
Surrounded by town folk who clowned it
Why? ‘cause I'm fresh off a island
Miles from the 6 with a smile and a childhood
Raised from bowels of military housing
The place that I grew, mo’ slippers than shoes”

Geo, an organizer with Anakbayan since 2002, connects the struggles for sovereignty in Hawai’i with his work with organizing for land rights with lyrics citing in “HI-808.”

“Gimme sunshine and mic and I’m fine/
Life been defined by nights under skies/
Next to the live where the sea meet land/
Got both feet planted in the sand/
Like damn bra, I’ve been missing all that, so I had to go back to the island like that/
And now it's flash forward on a track gotta liberate my people like Haunani-Kay Trask.”

“Cruz” enhances the EP overall with its feel-good reggae tone while one of the more fast-paced tracks “New People” gives a modern twist and lyrics about President Obama. Geo said that he was pleased about his election, but also wanted to give a reminder that grassroots organizing and work from the people (bottom-up approach) is still needed despite his election.

“Everybody sayin’ “Yes We Can!” in a time that you can’t do much/
I guess that’s just what it is when a bank and a market bite the dust/
Plus can’t fall back on a man with a suit, with a plan all by himself/
Gotta have health, gotta act stealth/
And a skill called ‘learn how to tighten your belt.’ ”

Geologic told ‘Philippine News’ that OOF! represents “a side of Blue Scholars that was always there, but that most people had not heard or seen before.”

Blue Scholars fans will be pleased to hear the same types of messages the duo produces in previous albums and new people to Blue Scholars will enjoy the composition in their ability to range into an unexpected genre.