Babaylan Sing Back - by Grace Nono (Paperback)

About the Book

"An ethnography of a number of Native Philippine ritual specialists' voices in song and speech, drawing on fieldwork in the Philippines and in the Philippine diaspora spanning thirty years and written in conversation with selected voice, gender, and decolonization discourses. Asserts Native historical agency amidst embattled conditions on the 500th year anniversary of the histories of Philippine colonization"--

Book Synopsis

Babaylan Sing Back depicts the embodied voices of Native Philippine ritual specialists popularly known as babaylan. These ritual specialists are widely believed to have perished during colonial times, or to survive on the margins in the present-day. They are either persecuted as witches and purveyors of superstition, or valorized as symbols of gender equality and anticolonial resistance.

Drawing on fieldwork in the Philippines and in the Philippine diaspora, Grace Nono's deep engagement with the song and speech of a number of living ritual specialists demonstrates Native historical agency in the 500th year anniversary of the contact between the people of the Philippine Islands and the European colonizers.

Review Quotes

Babaylan Sing Back synthesizes Nono's work over the past several decades and the result is a fascinating in-depth analysis of ritual oral traditions of "invisible" shamans. Her familiarity with many of the ritual specialists who appear in the book and meticulous research she has conducted over the decades provides a rich level of detail that adds to the reader's experience and understanding.

-- "Bangkok Post"

Grace Nono offers rich theoretical and empirical material to all those interested in Philippine babaylan, ritual healing, and Southeast Asian shamanism in general.

-- "PACIFIC AFFAIRS"

About the Author

Grace Nono is an ethnomusicologist and interdisciplinary scholar. She is also a singer of Philippine oral chants, and the founder of the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, a Philippine non-profit organization dedicated to cultural revitalization.