Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Reading The Shared Voice by Grace Nono...
draws me deeper into the indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP) of Filipinos. This 15-year research project on the oralist traditions in the Philippines is only a taste, a sip from the deep well where these spring from! In this book, Grace was able to feature ten oralists - many of whom are also shamans/babaylan/healers like Mendung Sabal, who received her gift of chanting, story-telling, healing, and weaving directly from her abyans/spirit guides. Another is Evelyn Rivera Mirano, a US-born Fil Am who grew up in the Philippines, was trained in classical European musical traditions and was later drawn to research and study Filipino oral traditions. Florencia Havana is a christianized Manobo who valorize and include the Manobo oral traditions in the Methodist church that she and her husband pastor. What a great collection and if this is only a taste, I think of the depth and breadth of that spring. How it must be waiting to feed us.
What Grace Nono has accomplished in this compilation includes: academic theories and concepts about primary and secondary orality; the process of doing this kind of research as a lifelong commitment, perhaps even a calling by the spirits; the need to keep the traditions alive and sustained by the communities of origin as well as by those of us outside such communities; the healing power of being rooted in the indigenous and all that invokes in the cells of our bodies and memories.
As I write this, I am listening to Translating the Gongs by Grace' musical collaborator, Bob Aves... and before this, to Kulintronica by San Francisco-based Ron Quesada (who also helped facilitate Grace' recent performance in SF). I hear the kulintang, gongs, drums, electric guitar, and Grace's voice and I think about the re-imagination of indigenous traditions by contemporary artists in the homeland and in the diaspora.
Whereas I used to labor in my intellect about the politics of appropriation, I realize that I'm doing so less and less. Fed by a growing tacit knowing and trust in the power of these IKSP to move me beyond the linearity of intellectual predispositions -- is a beautiful feeling. If I can keep the monkey brain from being imprisoned by its own narrowness, who knows what is next?
draws me deeper into the indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP) of Filipinos. This 15-year research project on the oralist traditions in the Philippines is only a taste, a sip from the deep well where these spring from! In this book, Grace was able to feature ten oralists - many of whom are also shamans/babaylan/healers like Mendung Sabal, who received her gift of chanting, story-telling, healing, and weaving directly from her abyans/spirit guides. Another is Evelyn Rivera Mirano, a US-born Fil Am who grew up in the Philippines, was trained in classical European musical traditions and was later drawn to research and study Filipino oral traditions. Florencia Havana is a christianized Manobo who valorize and include the Manobo oral traditions in the Methodist church that she and her husband pastor. What a great collection and if this is only a taste, I think of the depth and breadth of that spring. How it must be waiting to feed us.
What Grace Nono has accomplished in this compilation includes: academic theories and concepts about primary and secondary orality; the process of doing this kind of research as a lifelong commitment, perhaps even a calling by the spirits; the need to keep the traditions alive and sustained by the communities of origin as well as by those of us outside such communities; the healing power of being rooted in the indigenous and all that invokes in the cells of our bodies and memories.
As I write this, I am listening to Translating the Gongs by Grace' musical collaborator, Bob Aves... and before this, to Kulintronica by San Francisco-based Ron Quesada (who also helped facilitate Grace' recent performance in SF). I hear the kulintang, gongs, drums, electric guitar, and Grace's voice and I think about the re-imagination of indigenous traditions by contemporary artists in the homeland and in the diaspora.
Whereas I used to labor in my intellect about the politics of appropriation, I realize that I'm doing so less and less. Fed by a growing tacit knowing and trust in the power of these IKSP to move me beyond the linearity of intellectual predispositions -- is a beautiful feeling. If I can keep the monkey brain from being imprisoned by its own narrowness, who knows what is next?
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