Uncovering the incredible oral history of the British Pakistani community, stored on cassette tapes used to communicate with family overseas.

6x 15mins, by Modus Arts CIC, first aired December 2021

In the 1960s and 1970s, while many of us were using our cassette recorders to tape our favourite songs from the radio, migratory communities were using this affordable means of audio recording to capture personal messages and send them overseas.

The result of a nationwide search for surviving examples of so-called ‘Tape Letters’, sound artist Wajid Yaseen meets some of the remaining members of the British Pakistani community who used tapes in this way.

From the political to the highly personal, Yaseen unveils a series of previously hidden tales of migration, many of which would otherwise be lost forever.