Mindful of Malta

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"Both of my parents were from Malta. As I child growing up in Brixton in the 1980s, there was a very small Maltese community. I would go to Maltese mass with my parents. There was never an organ being played for people to sing along too, but everyone used to sing in Maltese. My parents migrated to the UK after World War Two as there was no work. I have always felt like an outsider, growing up in Brixton, being a minority within a minority.
"As the singing was out of tune in the initial recording, I tuned the voices as much as possible using Logic Pro so I could add a church organ to the voices, from my memory and in the original recording. I also used tape delay to distort the sounds and add a psychedelic vibe as I believe much research is needed for psychedelics in treatment of Alzheimer's.
"I wanted to use the recording as an atmospheric pad, the extra vocals harmonies are sung by myself, with a melody I wrote to go with audio recording.
"I specifically used the snippet of the voices singing “Maria”, as the sample of the women speaking in Maltese is my mother named Maria-anna. She was from a poor family and traumatised as a 5 year old due to World War Two, having seen the devastation of war. The piece of music is a lament for her slowly fading away, due to her having Alziehmers and dementia. I played the audio to her and then recorded what she said after, what she was saying was fairly apt: “We had nothing”, “I don’t know, we used to sing” “Leave it, my mind is not good, I am an old woman now”.
"I dedicate the work it to my mum and dad, who were both from the Maltese islands."
Maltese mass reimagined by Joseph Aquilina.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration