Born and raised in Agusan, Northeastern Mindanao, Southern Philippines, Grace Nono is an award-winning Philippine-world music artist-producer, researcher-teacher, and cultural worker-administrator.
Learning from Philippine elders the performance of a number of oral traditions for the past fifteen years, and infusing these with her own contemporary spirit, Grace is known to advance through music, issues such as living identity, environmentalism, women’s rights, and inter-faith dialogue.
She has been featured in world-music festivals around the world, and was principal vocalist for the Asian Fantasy Orchestra in its Asian tours from 1998 to 2002. As a recording artist, Grace has released five acclaimed solo recordings, and together with principal collaborator, composer-arranger-musical director Bob Aves, established Tao Music, an all-Filipino record label, whose publications on various Philippine traditional musics are being used by a number of schools and teachers as instructional materials for the teaching of Philippine music, arts and culture. In 2006, Grace was awarded a residency at the Asia-Pacific Performance Exchange Program at the UCLA, and this 2008, another fellowship grant is being granted to her by the Asian Arts Council.
A product of the University of the Philippines where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Humanities and master’s degree in Philippine Studies, Grace has taught Philippine Traditional Arts at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, and Philippine Oral History at Miriam College. At the moment, she prepares to print her book, the Shared Voice: Oralist Narratives from the Philippines, as she embarks on a new research on the interface of music, spirit, and healing among Philippine shamans and other ritual specialists.
On the administrative front, Grace serves as Founding Director for the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, a non-government organization engaged in cultural research, music publications, popular education, scholarships, cultural regeneration and holistic development initiatives, for which she has been granted support by the Toyota Foundation, the Ford Foundation, UNESCO, the British Council, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the National Commission for Culture and Arts, Advocates of Philippine Fair Trade, AusAid, and other institutions.
To date, Grace has won 40 awards, including TOYM or Ten Outstanding Young Men, TOWNS or The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service, numerous Catholic Mass Media, Katha, Awit, National Press Club, and other awards for her artistic and cultural contributions.
For further information on Grace Nono as artist, please visit: www.gracenono.com
