From Storm to Stillness: The Narrative Arc of Transformation Across Cup of Joe’s Silakbo Album

Abstract

This study focuses on Silakbo by Cup of Joe as an album-length story where there is a different approach towards the concept of grief from linear to cyclical and transformative. Based on the Five Stages of Grief and the theories of narratology and psychoanalysis, the study analyzes the album's ten songs – “Bagyo”, “Wine”, “Kanelang Mata”, “Bubog”, “Siping”, “Pahina”, “Multo”, “Di Maari”, “Hinga” and “Silakbo” – as a whole text of narration. The study analyzes the album using qualitative content analysis and narrative analysis to identify common markers of grief, emotional patterns, narrative strategies, and structural shifts throughout the album. The results show that instead of the grief process going through the stages sequentially, Silakbo reimagines grief as a non-linear process in which the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance can overlap, recur, and change in sequence. Focalization, repetition, and analepsis are the important narrative techniques that convert psychological fixation into the text and musical construction. The analysis also singles out Hinga as the point of changeability in the album, a shift from the melancholic attachment to the reflective agency of the persona. Loss is not treated as a finality; however, in the album, the focus is on reconfiguration, in which loss remains part of oneself but no longer dictates it. The study is also relevant to literary and music studies because it situates Original Pilipino Music as an important medium for narratological and psychological analysis. It also shows how an album can serve as a macro-narrative that conveys a complex emotional shift through sequence, repetition, and thematic continuity.