A NEW series is being launched of an award-winning podcast that shines a light on an unorthodox method of communication between Scotland and Pakistan.
The second season of Tape Letters, which delves into the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape, begins on January 20.
Created as part of the Tape Letters Scotland Project, it delves into the communications between Scottish-Pakistani families and their relatives and friends in Pakistan.
It features original tape recordings and oral history interviews with Scottish-Pakistani families who used cassette tapes in this way between 1960 and 1980.
Produced by Steve Urquhart, the series is split into four episodes, each referencing the record and playback function of the cassette tape system: Play, Rewind, Pause and Fast Forward.
From sharing moments of joy to ones of heartbreak, series narrator Tabassum Niamat takes listeners on a journey charting individual and familial experiences of using tape letters, as well as reflecting upon questions around migration, language, identity and what it means to be Scottish-Pakistani.
First launched in 2018, Tape Letters is a pioneering social-history project by Modus Arts, which aims to unearth, archive, and represent a portrait of this method of communication for Pakistani families and communities in the UK between 1960-1980.
The project began with Modus Arts Director, Wajid Yaseen, discovering his own family’s history of sending personalised cassette tapes to relatives.
A series of three audio-visual exhibitions showcasing the stories and experiences of individuals and families interviewed as part of the project are currently on display at the Museum of Edinburgh, Tramway, Glasgow, and Dundee Central Library.
Tape Letters Scotland is also set to launch a WebXR-based digital exhibition this month, as well as an educational resource for early secondary school classes.
Yaseen said: “Sound as a medium is inherently at the heart of the Tape Letters Scotland project and podcasts are a natural platform, reflecting the way that people listened to these cassettes in the first place.
“We look forward to sharing the series with both people from the Scottish-Pakistani community themselves and second or third generation listeners interested in the heritage and history of their own community, while also introducing new audiences across the UK and beyond to this important area of social history and many of the universal themes the series explores.
“Steve Urquhart’s use of ‘audio transport’ as a thematic framing for each episode (play, rewind, pause, fast forward) is conceptually pleasing and means universality is kept at its heart. It reminds us that when we use these functions online, when we press ‘play,’ that triangle derives from these physical, mechanical buttons on a tape recorder.”
