?WHEN I was 10 years old, I dreamed of a song. It entered my liver and was kept there. It revealed the world to me.? Singer Grace Nono channels T?boli oralist Mendung Sabal?s ululations ? drawn deep not only from the latter?s liver but also from ?the deepest layer of the Earth from space, from the top of the clouds? and revealed in dreams and snake bite deliriums ? in the music she created with husband and guitarist Bob Aves under their own Tao label.

They have been a mesmerizing presence for some 20 odd years: Bob, the jazz guy, and Grace, the frontwoman with a voice now dusky, now rumbling from somewhere deep in her belly and then erupting in a keening that makes you gasp.

But that evocation was not her own. She begged, borrowed, stole, and ultimately transformed the work of inspirational mentors like Mendung Sabal, the T?boli woman from Surellah, South Cotabato, who recently passed away. Or Henio Estakio, an Ibaloi from Atok, Benguet, and a mambunong or shaman, whose healing prayer-chants are ?dictated? to him by the kabunyan or lower spirits.

At various times, Grace got some of these elders into the studio to capture their largely extemporaneous chants. Others she recorded ?on location? back in Agusan or up north in Benguet ? ?when I discovered this new universe that was opened to me,? she stutters, still awed by the experience. ?And definitely you can?t exhaust it in a lifetime. It?s just too vast! And the songs, they?re just the entry point! This is not just about songs. If I were a healer, my entry point would be plants. We have so much! That?s what I?m saying.?

Which was at odds with her decision to enroll in a music conservatory with its Western, technique-oriented curriculum ? a decision she reversed by dropping out after a few semesters. Instead, she chose graduate school, which gave her what she calls ?alternative frameworks? in which to explore her interactions with her oralist elders in a more holistic manner. It meant employing conventional research methods with ?intuition, dreams, reflection and other methods of knowing that are more culturally resonant.? She aimed for pakikipagkapwa, or active empathy.

And in the end ? but only in a manner of speaking, because her voracious need to chronicle and then transform has been never-ending ? she gathered them all in a long masteral paper that she presented in 2004. Then the hard part began. In order to bring her research to an audience beyond the academe, Grace needed to reshape her work into book form. The task fell on Bobbie Malay to edit her paper. The task to find funding and a publisher to bring it to fruition fell on her shoulders. It took four years.

?I went to different companies but they weren?t interested. And then Fundacion Santiago stepped in and they wanted to help out. Hulog ng langit lahat so I?m grateful that finally, it?s out.? ?It? is ?The Shared Voice: Chanted and Spoken Narratives from the Philippines,? which Anvil published in November 2008 (though Grace takes pains to point out that ?UP Press helped a lot before I went to Anvil?). It chronicles the life and art of 10 of Grace?s special muses ? oralists who sing or chant the history, rituals, myths and primordial aspirations of their tribe or community. Their chants and songs are featured in a CD that comes with the book.

In fact, Grace is muse to herself ? as a secondary oralist, or an interpreter if you will, of all that emanates from the primary oralists? liver and soul. ?Baleleng,? for example, was a famous song in Mindanao when Grace was growing up. In the ?70s it was popularized by Jakiri. Grace changed the lyrics so her version refers to overseas contract workers and features Tarsi S. Manandao, a singer-oralist from Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, whose voice was recorded in 1995.

?It was right after college when I first met elders who sang this way [and] I already wanted a book,? she says. ?That was like 20 years ago. But I had to go through the pedagogy myself ? learning. I wasn?t thinking about the book as a project yet. It was just a dream, a reverie. There was a whole journey ? I had to go back to school, be systematic about the research.?

So when did she feel she was finally ready to do the book? ?It was never like that. It?s like making an album. You just keep on working.?

Raised on a school reservation in Agusan in the southern island of Mindanao, Grace grew up listening to her transplanted parents sing the songs from whence they came: the folk songs of Ilocos from her dad, and Visayan songs like ?Ay Ay Kalisud? from her mom. In school, Grace sang what she calls ?avant garde arrangements of Philippine folk songs.? In high school, she moved north to Laguna to attend the Philippine High School for the Arts, where she played with the rondalla. In UP, she sang protest songs. And then discovered there were a few pesos to be made by fronting note-perfect rock ?n? roll bands.

Her epiphany occurred when she played in a Baguio Arts Festival and saw the absurdity of her mimicry. After a spell that got her out of music and muddling through her ?dark period,? she experienced a spiritual moment just as she says she hit ?rock bottom.?

It got her groove back, but Grace was determined to have it track a new direction. She returned to the oralists she had met before and unconsciously mined from and looked to them for answers. ?I wanted to know what this is that I had gotten myself into. Is it just the melodies that I like? Just the lyrics? What is it all about? So I found out that oral tradition is not just the songs themselves. There?s a whole process behind it and there are relationships that you can attribute it to as well.?

It was, in fact, a living, evolving culture ? threatened by apathy, lack of documentation and secondary oralists imbibing the ?liver? of the original oralists and finding themselves in translation.

And while she?s now researching ritualists and plans to come out with a new CD on Visayan love laments within the year; while she sits on the board of the Artist Welfare Project and sets up a pottery kiln for the community in Agusan as she spends time with her mother, Grace intends to keep sharing the voice. She calls on partners to help her publish and document these traditions while the primary oralists are still alive. She looks for translations that will resonate with ?contemporaneity.?

As she writes: ?I am barely scratching the surface!?

?The Shared Voice? is published by Anvil Publishing and Fundacion Santiago and available at National Book Store.