Video: Music, Voice, & Healing: A Conversation with Grace Nono

March 08, 2023

On March 8, 2023, Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani sat down with Dr. Grace Nono to discuss Dr. Nono’s work as an ethnographer and performer, shamanism in the Philippines, and some of the possible connections between sound and healing. This event was part of the Gnoseologies Series and focused on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.” Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research.

Full transcript:

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Music, Voice, & Healing-- a conversation with Grace Nono, March 8, 2023.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Good afternoon. And welcome to our gnosiologies event. My name is Giovanna Parmigiani and I'm the host of this series organized within the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the CSWR here at Harvard Divinity School. This series focuses on ways of knowing that are often labeled as non-rational.

Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science, these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research. What is this place of spirit possession, divination, and experiences perceived as out of the ordinary in our lives? How can we study and approach this type of phenomena?

Going beyond dichotomies such as body and mind, ordinary and extraordinary, reason and experience, and matter and spirit, this series holds scholars of different disciplines and practitioners interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of what counts as knowledge today.

Before introducing today's guest, one announcement-- the Q&A feature over Zoom is activated, therefore, you can type your questions for our guest throughout our conversation and I will try to ask them on your behalf if time allows. It goes without saying that if you have questions for us after the event, you can reach out to me by email and I will share them with Dr. Nono. You can find my email address in the chat or on the CSWR and HDS websites.

So today, I have the honor and privilege to have here with me Dr. Grace Nono. Dr. Grace Nono is an ethnomusicologist, music-performing artist, and cultural worker. Among her publications are the Babaylan Sing Back-- Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender, and Plays, Song of the Babaylan-- Living Voices Medicine Spiritualities of the Philippine- Ritualist-Oralist-Healers, and the Shared Voice-- Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines.

As performing artist, Grace is a singer who specializes in the performance of a number of oral songs taught to her by mostly elders in Mindanao, Visayas, and Luzon in the Philippines' three major island clusters. As cultural worker, Grace founded the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, a Philippine Non-profit Organization that has been engaged in cultural regeneration initiatives for almost three decades.

She has also begun co-producing documentary films, including Sacred Voices, Sacred Lands, and Wisdom Keepers of the Earth. So thank you very, very much, Grace, for being here. We're honored to have you back because you spent some time here at the CSWR in the past, right?

GRACE NONO: Thank you, Giovanna.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Hello. Hello, nice to see you.

GRACE NONO: Thank you for this invitation. I don't know how you found me, but I'm glad you did.

[LAUGHTER]

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Of course. Well, I was not at the CSWR when you spent your last period here because I was doing fieldwork, but I followed the activities, obviously. And I have a student, actually, who is very-- she has Filipino origins and she was very fond of your work. And we read together one of your books, so that's why I fell in love with you and your work. So thank you for being here.

GRACE NONO: Thank you so much.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: So how did you become a singer? And have there been changes in the repertoire? Do you want to share a bit about your story?

GRACE NONO: Yes. Giovanna, before I answer your question, may I offer a little bit of a prayer?

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Yes.

GRACE NONO: I would like to pay my respects to the creator, to the Earth that hosts us, to our ancestors and other guides, and to my collaborators through the years, many of whom are no longer with us, but who may be mentioned during the presentation and discussions.

I apologize in advance for whatever mistakes I may have. Please know that our intention here is good-- that is to contribute to mutual respect and understanding amongst peoples. May it be so.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: May it be so.

GRACE NONO: Thank you. Now, to your question-- how did I become a sinner and have there been changes in my repertoire? Well, Giovanna, I grew up, like most Filipinos in my generation, in the wake of over three centuries of colonization by Spain and the United States and ongoing cultural domination by the West, North.

OK. So do you see that? That was my childhood. Yeah, those are my parents, my mother and my father, during my elementary graduation. So just like almost everybody else, I mimicked western and westernized songs, which I loved and continued to love.

My mother was an English and mathematics teacher who taught me all-American tunes from a beat-up hardbound book that she had. Songs like "Whispering Hope" from 1868 and an English version of the Neapolitan song "O Sole Mio." Of course, you know this, Giovanna, right? But not the one that Elvis sang. It was a different version.

My father, on the other hand, mostly sang to me Hispanized folk songs in the vernacular languages of Ilocano and Visayan. And we have over 100 languages in the Philippines. I listened to popular songs on the radio. When I entered high school, we were immersed in European art, music, and Filipino compositions in the neoclassical style.

Then in college, I was introduced to American folk tunes by Bob Dylan and his cohort American jazz standards, punk, counterculture music, and performance sound art. All of these constituted for me the full range of music in the world. Not once were we told that there were such things as non-western musics, including those of our ancestors.

But that's what colonialism does-- it attempts to destroy people's sense of self, history, memory, culture, replacing these with the colonizers deemed superior. Now, after college, I accidentally heard a Native oral chant during a chance encounter with a Native mother in the mountains that connected our province with two others.

When I heard it, I could not place a sound in anything that I had heard in my entire life, yet I was captivated by it. Hearing it also made me confused why voices like these have been suppressed from being heard by my generation and perhaps from generations before ours.

So I would spend the next decades of my life finding ways to listen, to understand, and with the permission of a number of oral singers, learn to sing some of these songs. My research about orality and decolonization helped me make sense of what I was doing.

Now, when I became a professional singer-- one second. When I became a professional singer, I tried to learn a whole concert repertoire of these oral songs that were taught to me by Indigenous Native Christian and Native Muslim mentors. Here are some of my mentors. Do you see this picture? Do you see the slide?

That is Datu Migketay, one of my teachers. This is Mendung on the extreme right. These are my teachers who have-- well-loved mentors. This [INAUDIBLE] That is El Bae Angela Placido. And this is Ralph Varley, who taught me a more Hispanized genre. All right.

Learning to sing the songs from these mentors was not easy because I did not grow up listening to them and I don't speak the languages that they are sung in. It's one thing to learn the melodies and the words. It's a whole other matter to be able to improvise and let alone to sing in ways that express spirit.

I've been performing this repertoire almost exclusively for the last 28 years, together with Indigenous Muslim and Christian collaborators. Here are photos of some of our performances. This is together with my teacher right beside me, Mendung. That's in a gathering of ritualists in our own backyard. That is in the northern mountains.

This was with my fellow musicians in a concert in Japan. This was in Germany. This was in New York. In Sarawak, in Borneo. This was in the Philippines, in Thailand, in the Philippines. Yeah, all right. So that has been my life.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. Wonderful. And then how did you transition from being then a full-time performing artist to being a scholar?

GRACE NONO: Good question.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: What happened?

GRACE NONO: What happened, right?

[LAUGHTER]

Giovanna, I was always a singer with an academic background. Becoming a singer was a big surprise and not a pleasant one for my family, especially my mother, who could not understand why her daughter, who she sent to the best schools, would forgo having a stable academic career to become a singer under unstable conditions, despite achieving success.

Well, my mother did send me to art school, so why was she surprised? Looking back, becoming a singer was one of the greatest accidents of my life. Excuse me. Not only has it allowed me self-expression, it has given me intimate access to embodied knowledge that I may not obtain by solely reading books.

Focusing on subjugated repertoires seldom found or captured in literature-- and when they are, they're often-- they often appear in reified ways-- has also helped raise awareness about cultural expressions that colonial and neocolonial forces have disqualified, silenced, suppressed, rendered unintelligible, actively produced as nonexistent, by labeling them ignorant, irrational, backward, inferior, local, parochial, and nonproductive to pursue. And I am citing Boaventura de Sousa Santos here.

So why did I start writing books? I did it because all those singing has been the most profound gift in my life. It has not been able to express everything that I wanted to say. I began writing in earnest when I went back to school to get my graduate degrees. I knew that many of the problems we face stemmed from the neocolonial education that we have received, so I chose to acquire some fluency in the modes of thinking that I knew I must challenge and critique, while generously acknowledging whatever deserves appreciation.

So let me share with you-- this is my first book, The Shared Voice-- Chanted and Spoken Narratives in the Philippines. The focus of this was more methodological. I needed to know how I could obtain knowledge not by reading books. How do I get to the elders whose knowledges are not in libraries? Because it has mostly been the colonizers and the colonized elites who have published materials just about everything.

So how do I-- how do I learn from people who operate in a different knowledge economy? So that is-- this is what this book is all about. And once I had a way to learn even without reading tons of books, it's like the door started to open and I could already have a little bit of access. So that was the first book. That second one is Song--

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: And the audience can see why I love you and your work. I saw some comments. Yeah, thank you for sharing this.

GRACE NONO: And this is the second book, Song of the Babaylan. I think this is probably what you read. And this is really engaging deeply with a number-- we have-- you have to say a number because there's plenty. And how much can you contain in a book? Not very much. Ritual specialists from different parts of the Philippines. Again, Indigenous, Native Christian, and Native Muslim. So there are many differences among these practitioners. So this is what this book tries to contain. All right.

And the latest one, Babaylan Sing Back-- Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender, and Place. This one is more now in conversation with theories of the Babylon, theories of voice, sex, and gender, and place. So it's more-- you can say maybe transnational in approach.

I'm not just-- my audience here is not only my people, but also people in the Western world. And the one on the left, it's the same book but the one on the left was the Cornell edition. And the one on the right is by Ateneo University Press-- just came out. So

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Congratulations.

GRACE NONO: Thank you.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Can I ask you-- I mean maybe not all of us are acquainted-- can you tell us who are the Babaylan and how you got interested into them? Because I think Babaylan keeps coming up as a word, but maybe we need some unpacking here.

GRACE NONO: [LAUGHS] Thank you, Giovanna. Well, allow me to invite everybody to get a copy of Babaylan Sing Back. In this book, I explain why the term Babaylan, while useful as a shorthand, is imprecise, not only because it does not begin to capture the heterogeneity of ritual specialization in the Philippines, it also imposes one ritual specialist identity over others, which can be termed an instance of internal colonialism.

A more appropriate way is to use the specific local title of each practitioner, and this is what I try to do in the book's three chapters. Now, to your question, analogous to my story of not being made to hear non-western music when I was growing up, I also never heard any mention of the terms Babaylan or Baylan or any other ritual specialist's name during the entirety of my childhood. And this was Mindanao, which is known for its rich cultural traditions.

Religion to us meant Catholicism and Protestantism. Music meant westernized-- Western and westernized popular and classical music. Medicine meant allopathic medicine. Education meant that which transpired within the classroom. That was the totality of the-- more or less a totality of the reality that is revealed to us.

The thing about me, however, is besides being drawn to singing because my parents, almost everyone around me sang, was at an early age, I knew that I wanted to become a priest-- not a nun, but a priest. On the day of my elementary school graduation, I approached our parish priest to share with him my aspiration. And guess what happened?

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: [INAUDIBLE] say. [LAUGHS] Yeah. What did they say?

GRACE NONO: He effectively quashed my desire by telling me that this was not possible because not only am I a girl, I am a Catholic girl. And the tradition in Catholicism dictates that a girl cannot become a priest. I offered an immediate rebuttal. I was probably 11. I said, but father, tradition can be broken.

Well, I only got a stern gaze in response to my words. So that made me think how foolish I have been for even thinking priesthood was available for a girl like me. So I went on to high school and came across a Philippine history book that cited women priestesses called, in the book, Babaylan, during the Philippines pre-colonial and early colonial periods.

These priestesses were reported to have fought against the Spanish and American invaders in order to preserve Indigenous ways. And they were accordingly exterminated by the colonizers. Upon reading this, my thwarted desire for priesthood shifted to a fascination with this Indigenous tradition that accorded spiritual leadership to women.

Repeating some of what I said earlier, some years after I graduated from college, I had an unexpected encounter also with a living Baylan or ritual specialist among the Ata Manobo in that area. I could not believe that this was happening to me because I thought this Baylan or Babylon have all disappeared.

This encounter, by the-- encounter, by the way, took place exactly 32 years ago. I kept-- when I was face-to-face with this Baylan, I kept my bewilderment to myself. His name was Laco, a tall, slender man with deep voice and dark eyes. His countenance, more recessed than that of the convivial datu or chief who warmly welcomed the group of literacy teachers I was traveling with.

When we went downhill to the next village where we were to spend the evening, that was when I heard the oral chant for the first time-- a song by the Ata Manobo mother named Bansui, whose lilting voice moved me very deeply. Traveling back to the lowlands, I felt inspired but confused. What conspiracy was this that was suppressing the historical presence of the Baylan and Babaylan, and who knows who else?

I would spend the next decades finding ways to meet and listen to the voices of ritual specialists, many of whom are oral singers. 16 years and several ritual specialist encounters later, I found myself at the edge of the back of a motorcycle, hugging my 78-year-old mother in front of me as we moved along an old winding logging road towards the innermost parts of our home province, Agusan del Sur.

We tried to keep our balance as the driver swerved or obstinately moved forward in response to the challenges posed by the slippery ditches and mud pools. Awaiting us at our destination was an event that many Filipinos like ourselves do not believe to happen in the modern age-- a ritual officiated by a Baylan.

Practices like these have been widely thought to have perished during the Spanish and American colonial periods-- a notion welcomed by those who see Indigenous pre-Christian and pre-Islamic practices labeled paganism by the orthodoxies that have tried to eradicate or convert Native populations as, at best, a deficient, and at worst, a road to hell.

Such view is equally embraced by agents of the modern nation who have relegated such practices to the past or to the realm of ignorance and superstition. In contrast to these detractors are those who lament the alleged disappearance of these traditions, particularly the women priests who led them, who have since become idealized as protofeminists and/or as land-based symbols of anti-colonial resistance.

Both camps generally agree, however, that the woman my mother and I were about to meet either no longer exists or exists without a voice to make a difference. My mother struggled to stay stable on the seat in front of me. I kept stopping her aged body from lilting as the fragile vehicle bumped and swayed.

Raised during the middle years of the American colonial period when Indigenous ways were actively suppressed, following similar campaigns by the Spanish, she too grew up unaware of ritual specialists as well as Indigenous songs. It was only a year after this trip when she found out that not only have there been an oralist performer cousin of hers, there have also been [INAUDIBLE] ritual specialists among her aunts and uncles in Camiguin island, where she comes-- where she came from.

Seven years after her death, her own ethnolinguistic group, Camiguina was declared-- this was just in 2019-- was declared among the Philippines Indigenous cultural communities. To sum up, my answer to your question is I got interested in what is known as Babaylan because ever since I was a little girl, I've been interested in matters of spirit in songs and in the recovery of our identities and ways that were subjugated through five centuries of colonial and neocolonial domination.

And when I saw how ritual specialists' experiences and understandings of themselves complicated or contested much of what had been written and taught about them, I resolved to help rectify the situation by helping to get ritual specialists' voices heard. I hope I answered your question, Giovanna.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: No, fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I would like to ask you, according to Philippine ritual specialists you know-- and this is also to respond to Emily's question-- what is the relationship between music, voice, and healing? Emily writes, for example, I believe in music as medicine. Do you think that music can serve as healing for those grieving the loss of loved ones, for example? I mean, do you want to say more about music, voice, and healing within the--

GRACE NONO: Sure.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thanks.

GRACE NONO: Sure I will first answer that in relation to the ritual specialists.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thanks.

GRACE NONO: First of all, music is an English term that carries a lot of baggage-- as man-made, as bounded object, who's elements can be dissected as harmony, as written, or printed, as composed before it is performed, et cetera. All these could be reifying and misleading when applied to the oral expressions of other peoples.

The term needs to be decolonized by decentering its hegemonic associations with the meanings-- by the meanings used by the once and currently-colonized people who may deploy the same term in their own ways and for their own purposes. To the extent that we can consider the songs and chants that many Philippine ritualists sing and listen to as music, here's how some of them, who I wrote about in my second book, describe the relationships between their vocal expressions and healing.

I have outlined overlapping functions that these songs serve-- first as praise-- as praises to deity. Among the Cebuanas in Central Philippines, the Sinulog song-- Sinulog. Some people call it Sinulog, but my interlocutor, who had already passed, the revered [INAUDIBLE], she called it [INAUDIBLE].

According to her, the Sinulog songs, which are sung alongside dances, drumbeats, prayers, acrobatics, and theatrical presentations, are praises and expressions and devotion to the Señor Santo Niño, the Holy child, Jesus. Performed to fulfill the vows and to celebrate the savior, they act as please to the deity to provide for people's needs. Quite a number of healing miracles have taken place through the Sinulog according to [INAUDIBLE]-- the late [INAUDIBLE]. She had passed. And her fellow [INAUDIBLE] or Sinulog devotees.

Similarly, among the-- OK. So you have the picture of [INAUDIBLE] Similarly, among the modern manunubli of Batangas-- that was central Philippines earlier, now, we're going to Southern Luzon. The Subli songs according to several Batangas Tagalog manunubli led by their matrimonio or leader, the late Camilla Muhammad. These songs are praises to the Mahal Nippon or the Holy Cross of Babaylan and are performed together with dances and prayers that are part of the Subli ritual. The Subli songs honor and express devotion to the Mahal [INAUDIBLE] and renew vows to her.

Goswami, a devotee, however, is clear to say that the singing of the dancing themselves are not the direct causes of healing, for these devotees believe that it is the Mahal [INAUDIBLE], the deity, who heals. As for the manunubli, when they perform the Subli for the Mahal [INAUDIBLE], they can attest that their own body aches have disappeared. Their worries and heartaches have diminished. They have regained health and lightness of being.

So that's song as calls to the deity. Now this one-- or praise to the deity. This one is as call and appeal to spirits to come and help. OK. Among the [INAUDIBLE] in [INAUDIBLE], the new chant according to the late [INAUDIBLE], the one in the picture, Kahan, Kahan [INAUDIBLE] and his daughter [INAUDIBLE], the [INAUDIBLE] chant is the customary way to appeal to the creator [INAUDIBLE] during the [INAUDIBLE] feast performed to heal the sick and to bless the ritual participants.

Now, among the [INAUDIBLE] province, the [INAUDIBLE] according to the late [INAUDIBLE] Sister Rosario Bartolo, who is in the slide, one of the slides, the [INAUDIBLE] is a native adaptation of the Catholics Apostles' Creed. [INAUDIBLE] is known to be sung on different occasions, including when someone is sick and a close relative of the patient stands by a window at night to sing the [INAUDIBLE], to pray for healing, and the whole village sings along.

So next is song and chant as-- OK. Did you see this? That is sister Rosario, and this is [INAUDIBLE]. She's the medium here. We were singing the [INAUDIBLE] because that's what you do and to prepare for that deity, the spirit to come. And this is when she has come. It's a female deity. And look, she is working on the legs of another woman. The third is voice chant and song as the voice of spirit heard through the medium. OK.

Among the Maguindanao of Sultan Kudarat and Cotabato City, the daging, according to the late Maguindanao [INAUDIBLE] as well as [INAUDIBLE] the daging is known to be the tunong or the spirit's voice as it speaks with a tune as those singing.

In the same way that when the tunong or the spirit walks, it is by dancing the sagayan. The daging or spirit's voice is heard during rites like the kapagipat and [INAUDIBLE] go to perform to fulfill human obligations to the spirit world and to bring about healing and reconciliation between humans and spirits.

The fourth use, function is chant and song as a way to confront the inflictor. Among the South Kalinga in Kalinga Province, the dawak, according to the late Kalinga andadawak Aragoy Tumapang and her son Ernesto Tumapang, is chanted during the healing rites [INAUDIBLE] to confront one-on-one the cause of a person's illness.

Through the dawak, the ritual specialists or andadawak, often a female, negotiates with the spirits for the healing of the sick. She fights those that have captured the person's or the sick person's [INAUDIBLE] or soul that have caused the illness, and commands them, these spirits to flee while summoning the captured soul to return.

So that's Inang Aragoy on the left. And the fifth function of song that I saw from my conversations with these ritual specialists is as thanksgiving and payment for healing.

Among the Camiguingnon in Camiguin Island, a Dalit. According to the late mamuhat-buhat or medico Francisco "Nong" Cabeza Awitin and his daughter Cheche Awitin, Dalit is a gift or offering that may take the form of a song that the mamuhat-buhat or ritual specialist sings to the spirits at the end of his ritual or her ritual to make the spirits happy, so that they will heal his patient, her patient.

The Dalit may also take the form of the Charleston dance if it is what the spirits request for. These spirits may then tell the ritualist, "Don't worry, friend, here's-- your patient will get well." There are also times when the tumanod or the spirit asks the patient to sing a song as payment to the spirit that it offended and that caused the ailment. In other words, a song in exchange for the healing.

Now these are just some of the different overlapping functions of song and chant in the work of a few ritual specialists in different parts of the Philippines. Always, the songs and the chants are performed in the context of relationships between humans and spirits. Relationships that are believed to impact on people's health. So it is not-- you do not extract the song or the music and attribute the healing to that-- no.

This has to happen within that whole dynamic, the relationship between humans and humans, humans and spirit, spirit and spirit. Because the ritual specialist has his or her own helpers that negotiate with other spirits. All right.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: That's fantastic. I mean, I think we will have maybe time to talk-- to speak again about this aspect of relationship through music and voice with other than humans and among other than humans-- beings. But I really would like to, since I'm an anthropologist, an ethnographer like you, I am very curious to know about your methods to navigate in ethnographic and also ethnographic work because in the Song of the Babaylan I think you beautiful, dovetail, personal experience, and your research.

And so I was wondering, how was this [INAUDIBLE] and ethnographic work of yours and methods, how they were received by your supervisors. How do you inhabit the role of the researcher?

GRACE NONO: OK. Let's talk about how my dissertation committee, for example-- how they receive my kind of writing, especially my first two books, yeah? So my advisor-- yeah? Is that what you're asking about?

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Yes, yes, yes. I'm curious about commenting on your methods. [INAUDIBLE]

GRACE NONO: Yeah. So my advisor, the musicologist Suzanne Cusick, she wrote about my first two books as-- and I quote, "Written intentionally in a clear style that deflects the authority of her authorial voice so as to grant full authority to the voices of the singers themselves. These books can be read as instances of what academics call performative writing. That is writing meant to and act the power relationships. It means to describe. In these first two books, The Power Relationship Doctrine and Acts with a Shamanic Singers is one of the is one of mutual respect between a University educated scholar and singers who, though often just barely literate, carry many generations of orally transmitted erudition in their words and in the sounds that their embodied voices know how to make."

So that is how she saw my previous two books. Now, with a dissertation, one of my committee members told me, [INAUDIBLE], the performance ethnology scholar-- she commented during our defense. She said, and I quote, "I would like to rally with you and say that one of the most powerful things you can do, even if you only do it in a few condensed pages, is talk about yourself as a mediator, a person who has a foot in two places. We need you to tell us who you are and let us know that you will be leading us through this voyage. That would be a deeply political move. It's not navel gazing. Please honor this work by stating very clearly who you are. Your voice is another pillar, along with individuals about whom you write. I would run with the idea of you as scholar medium, meaning while you are not able by land, you are, in many ways, a metaphoric scholar medium, one who conveys information to us from the globalized world," end quote.

Now, [INAUDIBLE] is on point that fully divulging one's identity and social location as scholar is crucial, as it will help explain the cultural orientation, the values, concepts, theories, language, biases, and structures of power embedded in one's text. Now, in the field of Indigenous science, [INAUDIBLE] Colorado writes, inquiry is understood as the quote, "pursuit of the scholar's voice as one that is embodied, connected with community and anchored in ancestry. Unlike traditional modernist research that tends to require disassociating one's personal context from the inquiry process, Indigenous science anticipates the scholar's full integration into the inquiry. Truth is not reified as a thing outside of oneself but relates directly to the experience of the person," end quote.

To sum up my answer, I got into research, not necessarily because I wanted to become an academic, which was expected of me, and which I have recently accepted and begun to fulfill-- expectation of my mother. I became a researcher and scholar first and foremost because I had burning questions about what it means to be Filipino and Mindanao of southern and northern parentage in the wake of 500 years of colonial and ongoing neocolonial histories that I may participate in.

I had burning questions about what it means to be a singer call to priesthood that isn't available for me. I had burning questions about what it means to be a woman, a third world woman of color and a mother to an equally headstrong daughter-- That's my beloved-- in a patriarchal, racist, and capitalist world. My writing documents and shares with others my ongoing search for answers and has, of course, answers that have, of course, led to more questions. That's my answer. I hope--

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: No, that's fine. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Just a couple of other questions before moving-- yeah, the photo is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Before moving maybe to the questions from the audience-- so how the Babylan community reacted to your work as an ethnographer and as a performer? And do you have any stories you want to share with us about your mentor's interlocutors? I like stories. So I don't know, do you have anything to share with us?

GR Let's see. Let's see if I have stories to respond to this one. Well, reception, you cannot please everyone, regardless if you are coming from the inside or the outside, especially if you are promoting matters that many Indigenous peoples themselves have also come to demonize, like those pertaining to Native rituals, because we have all been made to believe that our ancestors were demons. And the only way that we can be saved is by severing our ancestral ties and by embracing the colonizer's ways.

I have found, however, that if one writes in a multi-vocal manner and tries once best to give justice to conflicting voices within the text, then it's possible that your text can find resonance among different quarters in communities. You also cannot please everyone, especially where there are power struggles, which many communities have plenty of.

And if your work becomes challenged because of internal rivalries, for example, in the end, it is your history of good relationships with your research partners in the communities that will help you. If your partners know in their hearts that you have been a positive presence in their lives, they who the law dictates are the ones who should make the decisions for themselves. They will be the ones who will fight for your collaborative work to continue.

As for my singing, I have generally received, at least from my mentors, who I am accountable to, positive feedback. In a recent visit to my chant mentor, [INAUDIBLE] he said in [INAUDIBLE], that I translate to English.

And I quote, "From the time I taught you the song from [INAUDIBLE] 20 years ago, your performance has evolved and grown, now you're able to emphasize feelings that are necessary to touch and move audiences who do not understand the language in which you sing," end quote.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful.

GRACE NONO: Now, I ask him-- yes. Affirming. I ask him, but why did you teach me the song [INAUDIBLE] when I do not come from your ethno linguistic group? Isn't this cultural appropriation? His response in [INAUDIBLE] that I translated to English. He said, and I quote, "I taught you [INAUDIBLE]--" that is a song under the [INAUDIBLE] genre-- "because you wanted to learn. Here no younger person sings this [INAUDIBLE] genre anymore. It makes your heart ache. But why will you feed a person food that he or she does not wish to eat? You, on the other hand," he said, was as if you were thirsty and famished. You saw singing as nourishment for your spirit.

The song, therefore, had to be shared with you. By sharing, I also broaden my knowledge because I was able to extend it over to you instead of being trapped inside me. I feel encouraged as a teacher, especially because we are in cultural education. And the culture we espouse is not one that is tribalistic and parochial. The principle behind chanting, for example, is universal. When you sing [INAUDIBLE], and you are able to touch on the song's implications on the land, the air, the water, tradition, past, future, it's as though you are expressing the spirit that animates our world. You can convey the message of nature through song to the whole universe," end quote.

Here's a wise guy. I'm so grateful that he has taught me in more ways than one, more than just the song. Now, more about cultural appropriation. Do we have time?

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Well, I mean, we have many questions from the audience. I also would like, if you want to talk more about your cultural work or world, your activism work, sorry. So what do you want? I mean, we have 10 minutes left. We have lots of things to say, lots of question from the audience. How do you feel about it? Do you want to tell us a bit about what you do besides write and sing?

GRACE NONO: Sure.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: And then we move to--

GRACE NONO: Sure. OK.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thanks.

GRACE NONO: I'll do that. OK. So besides writing and singing, I have also been running these last three decades a nonprofit organization that humbly contributes to cultural revitalization. Here's some of what we do.

Oh, there was a video that I wanted to show you about-- can we just backtrack a bit? Maybe there's no more time. That's all right. We'll just move on to our cultural work. Do you see this?

We just finished a week ago or a week and a half ago our 2023 webinar series for music and movement. So this is a lute, a two-stringed lute that was found all over the Philippines, or not all over, but in different areas in north, central, and southern Philippines. But now it is mostly found in Mindanao and in Palao'an.

And this is the Master [INAUDIBLE], our students from different places-- some of them already prominent musicians. This is a student, Theresa. This is how it sounds.

[PLAYING INSTRUMENT]

OK. So let's move on. This is the gongs, a guru [INAUDIBLE] and our students. And this is how it sounds.

[PLAYING INSTRUMENT]

OK. This is a dance class, and this is a narrative song class. So that's the webinar series that we hold almost every February. So if anybody is interested, especially those who are descended from Filipino ancestors, this-- if this interests you, you know where to find it. Soon--

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Well, actually, someone from the office is asking you, Grace, what is the name of your nonprofit?

GRACE NONO: It's Tao Foundation for--

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Please repeat.

GRACE NONO: TAO, T-A-O, Foundation for Culture and Arts.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: TAO Foundation for Cultural and Arts. Thank you so much.

GRACE NONO: You're welcome. It's very important to learn something with a body. This is what I experienced in my life as a singer. So here you learn with your hands. And so that does something to you, at least for some of us.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. So let's move to some question from the audience. So we want to hear about cultural appropriation. And so if you want to go back and tell us more about that aspect, I think it would be great. Since I think your cultural work-- it's very important. So I do want to make sure we mention it in this conversation.

GRACE NONO: OK. So different culture bearers, different communities have different-- how would you say, policies for sharing knowledge. So you cannot generalize. What I'm about to share with you now is one voice because there are others who would not share. And you have to respect that. You cannot force these things. You have to respect if people don't want to share.

Here's what she said. This is by [INAUDIBLE]. And she told me in [INAUDIBLE], and I translated to English. She said, and I quote, "Indigenous peoples have been victims of different forms of colonization, educational, cultural, legal, et cetera. And because we have adopted many colonial ways, it is our responsibility to decolonize ourselves. Those of us who have mostly come to adopt the ways of the outside world and who now live outside of our ancestral domains sometimes hastily react to things with no basis in tribal values. For example, they claim that Indigenous knowledge systems and practices are not appropriate to share with others. In my view, commenting rashly on such an issue without first gaining in-depth understanding leads to the non-adherence to tribal values."

To her, the tribe, and to her community, the tribe is generous and loves peace. "The tribe shares with others, whether it be knowledge or material things. It is not that the tribe does not give. The tribe gives, but there is a process that one undergoes, depending on what knowledge it is. The tribe gives-- if you want to learn a song, for example, you must go through a ritual to ask permission. The holder of that knowledge asks permission from the souls of ancestors who first lived and held such talent.

One also asked permission from the spirit and trusted with such knowledge by God that is the source of everything. Such process of asking permission is our customary way and is done even by tribal members who wish to learn from those who possess knowledge. It is true that the tribe's generosity has been exploited. But exploitation is not our way but, the influence of the colonizer. That has been adopted by those of us who also engage in exploitation. According to my father, if your neighbor does not share and you retaliate and do the same thing, you are helping to multiply such behavior," end quote.

Again, this is one view. You cannot use it to generalize. But if you want to learn things, you go to those who are willing to share. So that is one of the first things you have to know. What is their policy for knowledge sharing?

So in my experience, there are knowledges that can be shared and knowledge is that cannot be shared. As for the knowledges that can be shared, you have to go through the process. And this is the customary way. And in recent years, I have also started to coordinate for my latest activities with the state agency, the National Commission and Indigenous Peoples. So that is the more bureaucratic way.

I hope that answers the question. This is a very important question. Like, for example, those in the webinars, those elders are very clear. They are going to share, and nobody will be able to stop them.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Thank you very much for sharing this voice. As you say, this perspective, I think it is very useful, also to better understand the top context in which you operate and work. I think I will ask the last question from the audience because time is running.

But I really, really encourage Larry and the others that I can see on the Q&A who ask questions to you, too. Maybe send the question over to me, and I will forward them to Grace. And those of you who were shyer or just maybe do want to share or don't have anything to share right now or any question to ask, but might have them after this event is over to be in contact with me by email. And I will do my best to either answer or forward this question to Grace.

So I think that some of us are interested in the idea of-- you were very eloquent in describing us how your ritual specialist and interlocutors think about voice and healing. What is your experience? Do you have anything to say about your own journey with your voice, going through the journey you just spoke about in terms of healing?

GRACE NONO: OK. Do we have time?

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Well, a couple of minutes. I don't know whether it will be--

GRACE NONO: All right. OK, OK. So there is a deep relationality in the ritual specialist voice, right? So the question is what about non-ritual specialists like us, like me? Is my voice also relational? No.

The ethnomusicologist Martin Daughtry wrote-- and I agree with him-- that "the human voice is not the essence of a unitary self, but an instrument constructed in part through our mimetic, dialectic, dialogic, and polyphonic relationships with other voices that surround us from birth through which are different personalities our many overlapping selves are projected out into the world."

Now also from the standpoint of many ritual specialists who I've engaged with, it is not only they who have spirit guides. They say that all of us do. It's just that the majority of us, according to them, do not actively communicate with our guides as they do.

Now, what, if any, is a relationship between my singing with healing? Well, I have definitely sought to release my own stresses and to regain a better state of mind. But when I publicly sang-- when I started to publicly sing the chants that were taught to me by different ritual specialists and healers, after I underwent rituals to seek permission and after some of them my teachers received guidance from their own sources-- sometimes through dreams in which song to teach to me-- I have time and again heard audiences remark that when I sing, I seem to transform into something else other than my usual little self.

I wondered about what this meant because in my many years as a performer, I have never been physically inhabited by spirits. My lucidity has been crucial component to my every performance. But perhaps, what happens in these moments when my breathing is deeper than usual-- my spine erect, my limbs free in movement, my mind relaxed-- is perhaps my voice is increased in its ability to draw in and deliver energy, even command reality as a voice directly emerging from relationships with other voices both incarnate and discarnate.

As several of my mentors have pointed out, human spirit connection does not only take place in media mystic trance. It is when the spirit takes over the person's body and voice. Even when there is distance between human and spirit, inspiration and connection can still come through.

The question is, but this connection amount to healing. I personally will not claim that, except perhaps to the extent that the momentary experience of heightened connection between seen and unseen forces addresses the condition of alienation that saturates much of our modern existence. As they say, "to help connect is to help make whole. And to help make whole is to help heal." That is my answer.

GIOVANNA PARMIGIANI: Wonderful. Thank you so much. What a wonderful phrase to finish, to end this conversation. I think it's really time to wrap up now. So thank you very, very much, Grace, for your participation and wonderful conversation. And thank you all for having meeting with us.

Please stay tuned to the only activities of the CSWR, the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative and of those theologies. You can find all this information on the CSWR our website linked here in the chat box, including the registration link for our next [INAUDIBLE] event.

That will be on March 29. It will be a conversation with anthropologist Susan Lepselter on the resonance of unseen things, poetics, power, captivity, and UFOs in American uncanny. So thank you for having me with us. and I wish you all a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor-- Center for the Study of World Religions.