In the Twilight of a Dying Century

You’re Here Early!

Written for White Snake Project’s 2025 Sing Out Strong Project, In the Twilight of a Dying Century, composer Sapphire Skye Toth and Lyricist Christian Emecheta explore advocacy burn-out and the stages of grief that come with environmental justice. This piece is still in its premiere performances with White Snake Projects as can be seen here: https://www.whitesnakeprojects.org/sing-out-strong-environmental-voices-program/. A recording and sheet music will be made available after that time.

Lyrics:

In the twilight of a dying century,
We inherited a world on fire,
Glaciers weeping into rising seas,
Earth’s fever climbing ever higher.
We watched in silence as smokestacks
Belched their poison into the sky,
While powerful people debated, denied,
Let precious decades slip by.

We are the children of a warming world,
Born in a legacy of change,
Arbitrary lines on maps and shades of skin
Suddenly seem strange.
In the face of Nature’s fury, our differences fade away,
united by the struggle for survival day by day.

We grew up watching ancient forests fall,
Species vanish without trace,
Our wild spaces are now paved,
Concrete spreading at a dizzying pace.
In boardrooms high above the boulevards,
Rash decisions sealed our fate,
Those who saw only profit margins left us to suffocate.

From busy cities to remote islands,
We’re all in this together,
Bound not by borders but by the air we breathe
And the storms we weather.
When hurricanes howl and wildfires rage,
Consuming all they touch,
Will the color of our skin or our birthplace matter much?

We came of age in a world of plastic seas and skies choked with smog, Pacifying a planet sick and weary, stumbling through the fog.
While politicians argued over imagined racial divides,
Our shared home burned and flooded, with nowhere left to hide.
We are the last generation. We must quell this tide.

Composer’s Note:

I was commissioned by White Snake Projects as a composer for the 2025 cycle of their Sing Out Strong initative that focused

on climate justice. I was paired with Emecheta Christian — a Nigerian poet. As I read Emecheta’s words, I thought about how

exhauting the past 9 years have been as a person fighting for social justice. All of these feelings that no matter how hard we

cry out, there are those in power who continue to ignore us. In this piece, I wanted to capture the phenomenon of advocacy

fatigue through constant tonal center changes, a constant rhythm that never feels quite settled, and holding down the pedal of

a piano for long periods of time to lean into the percussive and echoing nature of the instrument’s patterns.

Even when you need a break, the movement doesn’t stop. Take your time, your feelings are valid. It makes sense to be

exhauted amongst all of this.