Allis Hamilton - My Grandmother didn​’​t just leave me a typewriter

from Obsolete Sounds by Cities and Memory

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My grandparents lived across the road from me growing up. It was my grandmother Mabel Hyacinth (May) who introduced me to poetry. She wrote poetry herself and often used a typewriter. When her and my grandfather finally moved out of their home, in the empty house on her kitchen table May had left me her typewriter. It was such a beautiful sight! Did she know I would grow up to become a writer? Perhaps, but I doubt she would have guessed I would use the typewriter as an instrument in a musical composition. I created this work in honour of her.

In the composition I have used the typewriter May gave me, alongside the typewriter sample provided by Cities and Memory. As well as the typewriters, to help set the space of the place where I was given the typewriter, I included a recording of my family at our home having breakfast in the sun. I also created cello, harmonium, chimes and vocal recordings to sit these sound among; as well as some frogs recorded at my home in the bush because I thought the frogs sounded like typewriters. And within all of this I have placed my grandmother May reading one of her poems, Web of Life. I recorded May reading this poem when she was 93. She lived to be 98 years young. She would be thrilled to know her poem may be heard by people from all around the world.

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from Obsolete Sounds, released November 28, 2022

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Cities and Memory Oxford, UK

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s biggest sound projects, a global, collaborative sound art and field recording programme with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time. It covers more than 100 countries and territories with 5,000+ sounds and more than 1,000 contributing artists.
Thousands of field recordings, recomposed and reimagined by artists around the world. ... more

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