Grace Nono sings again in 2020 Gugma Tour

MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – After taking a break, Grace Nono is returning to the stage with her 2020 Gugma Tour, alongside guitarists Erskine Basilio, Glenn Bondoc, and Pepe Ednave of the Universty of Santo Tomas College of Music.

The tour will feature Visayan love laments (“Gugma” means “love” in Visayan). As Grace explained, lament and love often go together “perhaps because love to our spouses or partners, our parents, our religious and political leaders makes us give so much of ourselves, if betrayed, the pain goes very deep.”

And yet, she stressed: “Pain does heal, hope does resurge, and new life does spring forth out of near-death experiences.”

The tour will kick off on with a show at Greenleaf Hotel in General Santos City on February 25, and Casa San Miguel in Zambales on February 29. A show at Teatro Marikina was originally scheduled for February 18, but was canceled amid the 2019-nCoV outbreak.

Grace said the show will be pared down to the basics – just 3 acoustic instruments, and one voice.

“There are no pyrotechniques, no smoke machines, no complex audio-visual presentations,” she said. The simplicity of the presentation is meant to invite the audience to listen.

“Listening is an often-undervalued skill. But it long predates the development of writing, and its return to prominence could spell the survival of humanity in an increasingly deaf and insensitive world,” she said.

‘Sing again’

The tour comes after the artist went on a break from performing to focus on her other projects in ehtnomusicology and cultural research.

“When I am quiet, it is usually because I am busy doing something,” she said.

In this case, Grace has been working on her third book on Philippine shamans, voice, gender, and place, based on her decades of ethnographic research and studies at the University of the Philippines, New York University, and Yale University.

She has also been helping her 25-year old cultural organization, the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, organize gatherings that bring together indigenous knowledge holders and younger generation Filipinos and Filipino descendants, as well as run the Agusan del Sur – School of living Traditions with the support of the National Commission for Culture and Arts.

“Now that my manuscript is close to being published, and the Agusan SLT is almost ready to open its doors to a new batch of Indigenous youth, it is time to sing again,” she said.

“Singing is no less important than writing books and organizing because it is the test that one has not only acquired knowledge but practice,” she added. – Rappler.com