World Premiere Of Song Cycle “Voices Lost In Industrial Winds” by Maria Christine Muyco

Applied ethnomusicology shaped the song cycle composition of Maria Christine Muyco. Before her residency at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Lake Como, Italy, Christine conducted fieldworks in Southeast Asia where she met different indigenous people whose struggles over land and water became the lyrics of her songs. Titled “Voices Lost in Industrial Winds,” she composed songs with thematically related “struggle narratives” in Bellagio, Italy.

Two years after the Bellagio residency, Christine was able to realize her music through the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) funded workshops and lectures in Columbia University, New York. The workshops were followed by a world premiere of her song cyle on April 27, 2024 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City. The program featured mezzo soprano Nicole Eliev (Manhattan School of Music) and pianist  “Yuk “Johnson” Shing Tang (Columbia University). The song cycle includes lyrics from indigenous persons that Christine collaborated with from her past fieldworks: Jesus Insilada (a Panay Bukidnon from The Philippines), Khru Sang kham Jong Yod (a Tai Yai from Thailand), Wynner Anak Samud (a Bidayuh from Malaysia) and Kaying Lor (a Hmong from Laos).

On the other hand, there is a community version of the songs that she created. She would share these for a more collective music-making and dancing in places of these writers in Southeast Asia from May to June this year. Set in graphic manuscript, the songs are going to be community participated and would be a different experience from the staged music set in New York.

These aforementioned two versions of her songs both embody the modernizing and disruptive encroachments on the lifeways of indigenous persons across Southeast Asia, as well as voice out the ways that these people and their communities constructively survive amidst disruptive forces.