No phone? The clever way Scotland's Pakistani families kept in touch

And for them, the audio cassette became a lifeline means of long-distance communication that connected the Pakistani diaspora in Scotland with the people they were missing ‘back home’.

Cassette tapes were sent between families in Britain and Pakistan (Image: Miriam Ali)

Packed with snippets about everyday events, sometimes with a burst of song, a poem or a much-loved recipe, the cassette recordings would capture the voices of children who had yet to meet their long-distance relations, or just left recording in the background as families went about their day to day business.

Now dozens of the cassette tapes which once winged their way overseas between friends and families, along with a collection of the memories which their rediscovery has ignited, have been gathered for a series of poignant audio-visual exhibitions that reflect on the important role they played for Scotland’s Pakistani population.

Beginning next month at venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, Tape Letters Scotland showcases the experiences of members of Scotland’s Pakistani communities between the 1960s and 1980s, when the audio tapes were a common means of international communication.

The project behind the exhibitions uses the tapes to explore topics of migration, identity, communication and language. While at its heart are the informal and intimate conversations recorded on the tapes that often shine light on what life was like for families in a country thousands of miles from their roots.     

In days when the few families who did have a telephone often had to share a communal or ‘party’ line with other households, the cassette format provided the chance to have a private, more intimate, conversation without fear of anyone listening in.

Recording messages also provided a more accessible option for those unable to read or write letters.

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Although apparently commonplace, the practice of sharing cassettes across the miles remained largely unknown to many even within British-Pakistani communities. While many original tapes were lost, discarded or recorded over. 

The widespread use of tapes among the communities came to the fore in 2018 after London-based Wajid Yaseen set out to find a lost recording of his late father singing. It led him to discover a collection of cassette tapes which had been shared between his family in Manchester, and friends and relations in Pakistan.

Wajid Yaseen with a photograph of his father, whose cassette recording inspired the Tape Letters project (Image: Maryam Wahid)

As he listened to hours of recordings, he realised he was being given a glimpse into the past and specific points in his own family history. When he discussed them with others, he realised many other British-Pakistani families had done the same, often storing away tapes as precious reminders of loved ones.

It led to a project, Tape Letters, run by Modus Arts, which aims to unearth, archive, and explain the pivotal role the audio cassette had for communities before phones – and then the internet – made connecting much easier.

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The project, supported by The Heritage Fund, began in England and more recently stretched to Scotland. The three exhibitions, at the Museum of Edinburgh, Tramway, Glasgow, and Dundee Central Library, bring together two years of work to gather stories and experiences from 20 cassette tapes, and 80 oral histories collected from individuals and families living across the central belt. 

Wajid, director of Modus Arts, said listening to the old recordings offered remarkable insight into often deeply personal emotions as families shared details of their lives and their sadness at being separated from loved ones via the tapes.

“You can feel the love that is there between people but there is a massive distance between them,” he said. “There was often a lot of crying.

“These cassettes were acting like a temporary bridge between them.

“You can hear the need for them to be connected and the pain of separation.”

Many tapes provided insight to the experiences of Pakistani women and captured songs, poems and humour.

Families recorded their daily lives on cassettes to send between Scotland and Pakistan (Image: Miriam Ali)

Others, he said, contained reminders of the lives families had left behind: one series of recordings contained traditional recipes which were used by the recipients to create dishes for their restaurant.

Posted back and forth, conversations could easily span weeks. According to some who eagerly awaited a cassette from Pakistan, they became ‘prized possessions’ which offered a longed for sense of having family in the room beside them.

Faria Khan, from Glasgow, who contributed to the archive, said: “Dad used to turn the cassette player on and test it and… he’d bang on the mic saying ‘testing, testing’.

“It was just such an exciting thing preparing to record something. He’d then explain to us that it was a message for the family back home in Pakistan.” 

Aqsa Mohammed, from Glasgow, who also took part, recalled the emotions the arrival of a new tape would ignite: “My mum would listen to the tapes and tears would fall – she was always crying.

“Even when recording she would be crying. I’d get excited though. Emotional for her. Excitement for us.” 

Aqsa Mohammed from Glasgow remembers her family sharing audio cassettes with loved ones in Pakistan (Image: Miriam Ali)

The series of exhibitions begins on 3 October. A public talk at the National Library of Scotland on 8 October featuring project director Wajid and Tape Letters Scotland Project Coordinator, Syma Ahmedd, will highlight the importance of archiving and preserving migrant stories for present and future generations.

Later, Tape Letters Scotland will become available as a WebXR-based digital exhibition and specialised app. There are also plans for a podcast series beginning in December.

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Wajid added: “The Tape Letters project has turned out to be far more fruitful than I could have envisaged, and analysing the archive has felt akin to undertaking a sort of 'sonic archaeology' – a deep dive into a wide range of fields and themes, including memory studies, linguistics, migration, discrimination, communication technologies, class and socio-economic dynamics, and many others.

“Although it has become a surprisingly complex social history project, it primarily demonstrates the deep and inherent need for people to communicate with each other in whatever way they can, wherever they’re originally from or wherever they find themselves in the world.”