MALAYA SOL | MADURA

Over two summers, Filipino vocalist, composer, and bandleader Malaya Sol assembled Madura, an eight-track album shaped by risking, gaining, losing, and the passage of time. The title, meaning “ripe” or “at its prime,” speaks to a kind of readiness that cannot be hurried.

Now in her mid-thirties, Malaya arrives at her debut album after years of performing, traveling, and writing. The record is not a retrospective, nor an attempt to capture everything she has done. It is a selection of songs that, together, reflect where she finds herself now.

“I've written many songs over the years, but these are the ones I chose for my first record. I don't believe an album should be forced. It takes time for the songs to find their place, and for me to articulate what I want to say through them.”

Malaya composed six of the album's eight tracks. “O Jardim” features music by flutist Itai Kriss and lyrics by Malaya. The album also includes two interpretations: “Alice in Wonderland,” written by Emma Wallace, and “Sem Você,” by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.

The album's sound emerges through an ensemble of distinct voices. A different guitarist appears on each track, bringing a particular sensibility to every arrangement. Kriss contributes flute, arrangements, and production throughout the record, his lines moving in counterpoint with Malaya's voice. Her vocals provide the album's continuity, carrying its emotional thread across changing textures, rhythms, and instrumental combinations.

Brazilian musical traditions including samba, afoxe and pagode. Tinges of bolero, and soul inform the music without prescribing a single direction. Strings, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, and horns enter and recede according to the needs of each composition. 

“Coração Ao Mar” began with a moment of physical surrender: “I was jumping from a boat into the deep waters of the Pacific. Beneath the surface, I imagined what it might mean to cast my heart into the sea — to relinquish the desire to determine its course.”  Brazilian guitarist and bassist Eduardo Mercuri reshaped the composition through his arrangement and production, bringing his own perspective and musical language.

Vitor Hirtsch mixed the album, with mastering by Thiago Monteiro.

Alongside the digital release, Madura extends into the kitchen through DRTY KTCHN, Malaya's first cookbook. A twelve-recipe memoir, the book explores food as another vessel for memory, identity, and cultural inheritance — a companion to the album's reflections on ripeness, time, and becoming.

The Madura vinyl and DRTY KTCHN cookbook were launched on September 20, 2026, at Red Pavilion in New York City. The album's digital release follows on November 11.

ABOUT MALAYA SOL

Malaya Sol is a Filipino vocalist, composer, and bandleader based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Zambales, Philippines, she draws from jazz, Brazilian music, Filipino Kundiman, Shidaiqu (Shanghai Jazz), and soul, approaching these traditions as living forms of expression and exchange.

Web: malayasol.com
Instagram: @malayasol