Humanoids Presents The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Queen
Humanoids has announced The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Queen, by acclaimed Emmy Award-winning producer and writer Gregory Cahill and artist Kat Baumann, with designer Cindy Sous and music archivist Rotanak Oum, about the legendary Cambodian singer Ros Serey Sothea, whose extraordinary talent led to stardom during Cambodia’s golden age of music in the 1960s until her mysterious disappearance during the brutal cultural purges of the Khmer Rouge regime, available in stores October 2023.
There is a saying in Cambodia: Music is the soul of a nation.
Perhaps no one embodied that spirit more than Ros Serey Sothea, a young woman who would forever change the landscape of Cambodian music as the Queen with the Golden Voice. From a humble rice farmer to superstar singer, Sothea’s success captured the hearts of the Khmer people. Throughout her life, she recorded over 500 songs, her signature angelic voice soaring over genres from traditional ballads to psychedelic rock and beyond.
As war raged, Sothea continued to sing, even as she served as one of the country’s first female paratroopers but after years of bloody conflict, the Khmer Rouge seized control, murdering artists and destroying their music, and resulting in the disappearance of Sothea, whose true fate is unknown to this day.
Ros Serey Sothea’s golden voice lives on in the popular music of Cambodia. Gone but not forgotten, her legacy continues to inspire. The Golden Voice tells the story of Sothea’s life, developed alongside the surviving family who knew her, and accompanied by an interactive soundtrack.
The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock’s Lost Queen will be available in bookstores everywhere on October 10, 2023 and on October 11, 2023 in comic shops.