the end of an amazing weekend

magandang gabi.

this amazing weekend couldn't have ended any better. i was in total awe of watching the incomparable Grace Nono. i honestly didn't know what to expect and the best experiences are such and this was no different. grace nono is a singer from the philippines who sings chants, meditations, and songs for the soul, ang diwa. i was talking about this with a friend on our bart ride home, but i was telling him that while listening to her voice i felt an immediate closeness to my lineage of the country where my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors came from. one of the songs was a chant from bauan, batangas. my father's city. of course i had goose bumps, but just an amazing amount of pride and oneness somehow. and my feelings were shared by a lot of the audience members of the filled bayanihan center in the soma of the city. "before listening to your voice, i felt so lost, but hearing you, i don't feel as alone anymore." "your singing is universal. i can feel it in the fibers of my being" these were some of the words at the intermission/talk-back session.

there were a lot of different themes discussed or at least brought up during this 2 hour concert. themes of de-colonialization, prayer, thanks to the creator, ofws, re(membering), indigenous cultures, were some of the things brought up.

growing up the way i did and being surrounded by capitalism and living under a mountain of bills and responsibilities, i've really forgotten about what's real and what's debilitating to life. living paycheck to paycheck is such a contradictory belief of what living is supposed to be... but is that reality. fuck yeah, if you got no money to pay off bills! but what i've learned from this show, was that love for everyone and thanks to the creator, the earth, and your ancestors is what is eternal. so a lot of this spiritual connectedness was a major feeling of this crowd. what sucks about living the life i've always thought of, is that part of my brain was calling this stuff... stuff. silly. waste of time. everything my dad would say. everything that american culture would say. everything i'm trying to fight.

for more information, visit her site, http://www.gracenono.com/ you can also hear her music by entering her name in imeem.

bitoy would've loved to be there. and in a way, i'd like to think that he was :)

paalam.