Grace Nono

Grace Nono is a Filipino singer, known for her musical style based on traditional Filipino rhythms.

She is also an ethnomusicologist, scholar of Philippine shamanism, and cultural worker.

Grace Nono was born on May 6, 1965, in Butuan, Agusan, Caraga region, northeastern Mindanao, southern Philippines, years before Agusan was divided into two independent provinces.

She was raised in the historic town of Bunawan, now a part of Agusan del Sur.

Her mother, Ramona R. Sacote, originally from Camiguin island, was an English and mathematics teacher, writer, and school administrator during the foundational years of what is now the Agusan Del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology.

Her father, Igmedio A. Nono, originally from Nueva Ecija, was a farmer leader who promoted land reform, established cooperatives, and advocated organic farming long before it was widespread.

Grace attended the East Bunawan Central School where she graduated at the top of her class in 1976.

After a year at the Agusan National High School, she moved to the Philippine High School for the Arts where she majored in Theatre Arts, finishing in 1981.

Grace went on to complete a bachelor's degree in Humanities in 1986 from the UP College Baguio, then an extension campus of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

In the 1990s, Grace became one of the pillars of what was then called the “Philippine alternative music scene,” a loose movement that was picked up by the major record labels.

With the help of her friends Noni Buencamino, Alex Cruz, Boy Yunchengco and Dodong Viray, and in collaboration with Bob Aves, composer, arranger, record producer and musical director, Grace released several multi-awarded and high-profile solo recordings that fused popular and traditional music styles: Tao Music (Record Plant 1992, BMG Pilipinas 1993), Opo (BMG Pilipinas 1995), and Isang Buhay (BMG Pilipinas 1998).

When the major record labels withdrew their support for music that did not comply with commercial trends, Grace was expected to shift to a more market driven sound in order to survive the music business.

She, however, remained steadfast in her musical vision.

These performances have included solo concerts at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila (1995, 2017), the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (1995), the House of the World's Cultures in Berlin (2005), the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (2006), Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona (2006), the Asia Society in New York (2013, 2015), the Renee Weiler Hall in New York (2012), the Irish Arts Center and Symphony Space in New York (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), the Soul Force Sacred Music Festival in Pasadena (2019), the World Exposition on Nature's Wisdom in Nagoya (2005), the WOMAD-Minato Mirai in Yokohama (1996), the National Museum in Singapore (2009), the Singapore Arts Festival (2003), the Hong Kong Festival for the Arts (1998), the Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching (2018), Asia Society Hong Kong (2013); collaborations with the Asian Fantasy Orchestra in New Delhi, Bombay, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Miyazaki (1998), Bangkok, Vientiane, Yangon, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (2003), and with the Gathering of Drummers in Prague and Bratislava (2009); various artists concerts at the Lincoln Center La Casita Festival in New York (2009), the Music Village Festival in London (2002), the World Music Festival in Penang (2012); guest performances and presentations in Monte Carlo (2006), Paris (2002, 2006), Ithaca (2006), Boston (2014, 2016), Toronto (2014), Vancouver (2014, 2016), Huairou (1995), Nanning (2006), Shanghai (2008), Kaohsiung (2005), Seoul, Jaraseom (2008), Jakarta, Honolulu (2006, 2016), Los Angeles (2006), San Francisco (2008), San Diego (2002), Chicago (2002), Ann Arbor (2016), Bloomington (2016), Richmond (2016), Blairstown (2014), Fairfield (2014), Quezon City, Cebu, Iloilo, Roxas, Bikol, Baguio, Sagada, Butuan, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, Zambales, Cagayan Valley, Palawan and Mindoro.

Grace began singing for audiences at the age of three when her mother often showed her off to her colleagues.

At age six Grace enrolled in the East Bunawan Central School and performed Western popular tunes during school programs.

At the Agusan National High School, she joined a choir that specialized in Euro-American avant garde-styled arrangements of local folk songs.

When she moved to the Philippine High School for the Arts, she played guitar for the school rondalla ensemble that specialized in Spanish-influenced lowland Christian music.

At the University of the Philippines-Baguio, she sang in a band called Montanosa that specialized in protest songs in the manner of American 60s folk music.

Upon her college graduation from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, she joined a band that played American jazz standards.

Then, as a member of the Baguio Arts Guild she fronted a punk-rock group called The Blank that performed American and British underground music.

The Blank gained a sizable following in the northern city of Baguio and in the Philippines’ capital, Manila.

Almost famous playing for enthusiastic crowds but confused with her musical direction, Grace decided to quit singing.

"I realized … that there was a yawning divide between my reality and the mission that one teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts had stated for me: 'to search for the Filipino cultural identity,'" she wrote in The Shared Voice.

Shortly thereafter, Grace met oral traditional singers in the mountains that connected her home province of Agusan with the provinces of Davao and Bukidnon.

She noted in a lecture: "I could not believe my ears when I first heard their voices. I could not locate them in music I was taught in school patterned after colonial models."

At that point, Grace began the process of "finding her voice" that she associated with voice decolonization.

After the name of her daughter, Tao, Grace also co-established the independent record label Tao Music that released recordings of Philippine traditional music: Maguindanao Kulintang featuring Aga Mayo Butocan (1995), Pakaradia-an: Maranao Epic Chants and Instrumental Music featuring Sindao Banisil (1996), Marino: Hanunuo Mangyan Music and Chanted Poetry featuring Ulyaw Bat-ang, et al. (1998), Tudbulul Lunay Mogul: T’boli Hero of Lunay, the Place of Gongs and Music featuring Mendung Sabal (2002), and Kahimunan: Cultural Music of the Manobo, Higaonon and Banwaon of Agusan del Sur featuring Datu Yadup Salvador Placido, et al. (2002).

Grace's training prepared her for both music performance and academic work.

Following years of ethnographic engagements and graduate/post graduate studies, she has written at the intersections of Ethnomusicology, Indigenous Religious Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies.

Without corporate support, she independently co-produced other award-winning solo albums: Hulagpos: Women’s Music and Poetry (with prominent women poets Marra Pl. Lanot, Elynia Mabanglo, Luisa Igloria, among others, Arugaan ng Kalakasan 1999), Diwa (Tao Music 2008), and Dalit (Tao Music 2009).

Grace also went deeper in her study of oral traditional musics, learning the performance of a few traditional chants from elderly singers in different parts of the Philippines.

She proceeded to do a master's degree in Area Studies focusing on the Philippines in 2004 from UP Diliman in Quezon City.

She has been a fellow of the Asian Cultural Council in New York in 2008 and in 2017–19, the UCLA Asia Pacific Performance Exchange in Los Angeles in 2006, the Asia-Pacific Cultural Center for UNESCO in Kyoto in 2009, the Asian Institute of Management's Managing the Arts Program in Makati in 2003, and the Global Research Initiative in Florence in 2013.

In 2009, Grace began her doctoral studies in Ethnomusicology at New York University, graduating in 2014.

She has published two award-winning books in the Philippines - Song of the Babaylan: Living Voices, Medicines, Spiritualities of Philippine Ritualist-Oralist-Healers (Institute of Spirituality in Asia, 2013), edited by Carolina S. Malay, winner of the 2014 Gintong Aklat Book Award for Arts and Culture, and the 2014 Jaime Cardinal Sin Catholic Book Award for Spirituality, and The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines (Pasig: ANVIL Publishing and Fundacion Santiago, 2008), edited by Carolina S. Malay, winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Arts.

From 2015 to 2016, Grace was awarded a post-doctoral position at the Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program, with residency at the Center for the Study of World Religions in Cambridge.

Grace is known for her music performances that draw from Philippine sung oral traditions.

She has performed in over sixty cities and venues in over twenty countries in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Grace received a second master's degree in Religious and Gender Studies in 2019 from Yale University.