Gram_blue_carr_

This sound work is about rekindling lost, and perhaps forgotten, sounds. It begins with the box.

A leather box that is over eighty years old, has lived in three different countries, two different continents and contains over fifty 78 rpm recordings of classical music and opera sung by the first generation of phonograph stars.

This box and its contents were inherited by my grandmother, who was born on a small island in British Columbia, Salt Spring Island, in 1910.

She took the box with her when she left the island and carried it with her to her various adult homes until her death in 2000.

In September 2012 I took the box of records back to Salt Spring Island. With the help of a second sound recordist and we played the records, on a portable gramophone, in chosen places around the Gulf Islands where my grandmother and her family might have gone for picnics, played tennis or danced.

We tried to imagine sonically what life might have been like for them over 100 years ago. We also talked to today's Salt Spring inhabitants on their reasons for being on the island.

'A Box of 78s', a soundwork and vinyl record by DinahBird