PRESS
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AN INTRO
LUYOS MC
Sacred Truth led me to S☯undness
"Beautiful work. It is a challenging and meaningful piece. Grateful you invited me to see/hear it in May. Your music and soundscapes were such an intrinsic and important part of it."
–Louisa Krátká (Canadian singer-songwriter, improviser, and violin/fiddle instructor), on Hilot Means Healer Live Reading & Book Launch, June 2026
"MaryCarl is one-of-a-kind. She makes no attempts to follow or adopt trends. Her music, like everything else in her life, is an honest expression of her heart and her attempts to achieve meaningful justice in the world."
–Richard Laviolette (Canadian indie rock, contemporary folk, and alt-country singer-songwriter) for Kazoo! Fest 2017
"MaryCarl Guiao must be commended for integrating pre-colonial instruments, including the Lumad kulintang (a vertically hung set of gongs), into the soundscape. The unfamiliar sounds, rhythms, and beats ratchet up the already intense emotion, accelerating our connection with the trauma of war."
-Sylvie Webb, " 'Hilot Means Healer': The Intersection Between Magic & Reality" for Sesaya Magazine, 2019
Kamusta po, the name's MaryCarl. I'm a daughter of the region in the world that's currently known as the Philippines.
Along my path, after over a decade of relentless independent, bottom-up community building and organizing, particularly through supporting migrant workers by co-founding Guelph-based Fuerza/Puwersa and through collaborative hosting and producing for campus/community radio shows, including co-founding Migrant Matters Radio, and regularly contributing to Stark Raven Radio (politics of criminalization), Groundwire News, and CFRU News, I'd become a student of Manuvu and Moro kulintang gong music.
These traditions that have been echoing throughout the land our colonized world knows as the Southern Philippines for centuries and beyond.
I have great gratitude for having had received kulintang mentorship from members of the Obo Manuvu tribe, the late Guro Danongan "Danny" Kalanduyan, and more humble hearts carrying on such timeless music, language, and stories.
I arrive in the holistic arts, continuing to create and support energy that truly nurtures all of Humanity's ancestral ways where respecting Nature and Life remain an Indispensable and essential priority.
I'm intent on identifying and helping undo cycles of abusive dynamics and the sickness of colonial, industrial, and biodigital impulse through sound.
I move in spiritual restoration, on a path to detoxing from industrial civilization/information society/biodigital convergence systems and paradigms.
 Ancestral memory regeneration |  Preserving reality and ancestral arts |
|---|---|
 Independent artist |  A collaborative project |
 Learning facilitator |  2 Posters / $5-$20*, sliding scale |
 Some of my freelance writings & interviews |  Manuvu & Moro community expression regeneration |
THANK YOU Long winter FOR THE PHOTO
We are one with all that breathes.
Peace to all who have taken the time to support my work.
The name "Luyos" in my artist moniker is inspired by a tree in Maharlika that I met years ago.
Connect: LuyosMaryCarlATriseup.net
Edited and Filmed by the late Guro Danny Kalanduyan
VIDEO//
Meet my mentor,
the late Kulintang Master Danongan "Danny" Kalanduyan.
First time learning Tagunggo.
THANK YOU kazoo! fest FOR THE PHOTO
THANK YOU Al Doerksen FOR THE PHOTO
THANK YOU Matt Rogalsky FOR THE PHOTO
THANK YOU Spring morris FOR THE PHOTO
REVIEWS
2019
https://www.intermissionmagazine.ca/in-conversation/in-conversation-cast-crew-of-hilot-means-healer/
https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/hilot-means-healer-simalaya-alcampo-cahoots/
https://istvandugalin.com/2019/10/12/hilot-means-healer/
http://slotkinletter.com/2019/10/review-hilot-means-healer
http://sesaya.com/2019/10/hilot-means-healer/
2018
http://kazookazoo.ca/why-luyos-mc-rules-2/
2017
http://kazookazoo.ca/why-luyos-mc-rules/
“Guiao started incorporating poetry into her kulintang, and then added bird songs and other nature sounds. 'I use those to remind people of nature,' she says. 'And I use healing frequencies that correspond to nature sounds. There are certain sonic frequencies that are believed to affect people on a physical level—they’re calming in a healing way. My intention is to create music that’s soothing, but the social mission is number one. And that is to encourage critical thinking about colonialism. I think it’s important to hear perspectives that don’t usually have a platform...'”—Mary Dickie - Music Works Magazine
"HILOT takes its audience on an emotional journey as these once strangers come together as a family during a time of war and strife, revealing deep ancestral secrets and intense intergenerational trauma. This is all accentuated by the haunting set design of Jung-Hye Kim and the affecting sound design by MaryCarl Guiao who brings the Philippines’ dying art of Obo Manuvu kulintang music to the stage for the first time in Canada."
-Justine Abigail Yu, "In Conversation: Cast & Crew of HILOT MEANS HEALER" for Intermission Magazine, 2019