My Family: The Early Years

Programme Notes

This is one of the most personal projects I have ever worked on. I created this music documentary as a Christmas gift for my parents, chronicling their early years in Canada as immigrants—a story of overcoming obstacles to build a life for themselves. As I worked on it, I quickly realized it would also become a journey of personal self-exploration.

In addition to my narration, the material came from old audio cassettes that had been gathering dust in my parents’ house. Back in the 1970s, alongside letter writing, it was popular to record one’s voice and send those recordings instead of letters. These spoken messages, mostly in Hungarian, offer a glimpse into the relationships between different family members and reveal how the stress of an ocean separating those bonds affected my parents.

– Frank Horvat