Cassettes(and other mediums of music) are a form of culture in my family. It's how my dad is able to pass down music to me, and how his dad was able to before him. My parents threw away all of their cassettes a while ago, but there were a select few they kept, and with me recently coming in possession of a player, I was able to listen to them. One of the tapes that my dad kept was a tape of his grandmother, my great-grandmother, in an interview with another one of our family members. It talks about how she used to live by a creek, and she would spend a lot of time in a post office with her friends and family who owned the place. She had lots of siblings, whom she loved dearly, but one of the main points of the tape were the pies she used to make for everyone. They sounded delicious, and one of my dads cousins wrote a song about them, which plays at the beginning of the tape, called ‘Grandma’s Sugar Pie.’ I never got to meet my great-grandmother, and so this tape is a way for me to get to know her, and a way for the rest of my family to look back on her life and remember her. She was born over 120 years ago, so the tape describing her life back then really is a way of preserving history. 

– Matthew Marsh

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more