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Margaret Hammett Lived

by Tony Dupé

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Subscribe to the Lost Tribe Sound album series "Salt and Gravity" and receive 'Margaret Hammett Lived' on CD or digitally at a discounted price here: https://losttribesound.bandcamp.com/album/salt-and-gravity-series
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    EU/UK/ROW orders for this item will ship from Poland.
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    • Glass Mastered CD
    • Gatefold heavy stock, reverse printed case
    • Limited to 100 Editions
    ------------------------------------------------
    Subscribe to the Lost Tribe Sound album series "Salt and Gravity" and receive 'Margaret Hammett Lived' on CD or digitally at a discounted price here: losttribesound.bandcamp.com/album/salt-and-gravity-series

    Includes unlimited streaming of Margaret Hammett Lived via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    edition of 100 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD or more 

     

1.
I lay down 05:40
2.
I prayed 00:43
3.
4.
5.
6.
I fluttered 01:11
7.
We lay awake 03:54
8.
9.

about

'Margaret Hammett Lived' is a suite of music by Tony Dupé. The album is part of US label Lost Tribe Sound's album series, Salt and Gravity.

More info on the series here: losttribesound.bandcamp.com/album/salt-and-gravity-series

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Last year in and out of lockdown, Dupé made an album about his great-aunt Margaret, who spent her entire adult life in service at Abbotsford Convent. Margaret’s life story was both ordinary, and even more so in hindsight extraordinary. She lived a life that would be considered extreme today… a life without freedom. Reflecting upon her life proved to be humble, emotional, and fertile ground for 21st-century perspective whilst exploring narrative and biography through music.

While the music serves as most uninhibited expression of Margaret’s story, these writings from Dupé help provide further insight into Margaret’s life:

Margaret was my grandmother’s sister, I didn’t know my grandmother but I met Margaret several times as a child. We would drive all day from Canberra to Melbourne from before light to after, to spend time with our relatives since both my parents were born and raised there.

Visiting this diminutive elderly woman with white hair in a bun and black habit and large crucifix was a strange procedure since she was clearly a prisoner in this convent. With both of her parents dead, her sisters put her into Abbotsford Convent as a grieving nineteen year old unwed mother.

A nun would sit at our table listening to the conversation to remind us all of that fact. Margaret was a “bad girl” and as such had been kept away from the children and reforming girls that were also in the convent. She existed within this small village of impounded women, day by day through two world wars, Vietnam and the death of her entire family. She slept in a dormitory, rose at five for prayers, worked in a laundry all day and had only one possession, a secret radio to listen to the races and footy. Her dormitory was in a building within a grey concrete courtyard which was gated and had one tree within it whilst restricted beautiful grounds lay all around.

As a teenager, Margaret was working for a married farmer in the western districts and had fallen pregnant to him (I don’t know if it was consensual) and had a child which she named Eileen after her favourite sister. The child was taken away and when she had another child a year later with the same man, she also called her Eileen (probably believing the first child had died). The first Eileen lived and went into the world equally oblivious to her mother’s plight and the second Eileen died after birth and was quietly buried in a suburb in Melbourne where Margaret would be buried 65 years later.

When she arrived at the convent, Margaret was given a new name and the gate closed behind her for the rest of her life. My father loved this wiry rebel (named Jock by him for her jockey-like stature) who lived both a hard and a sheltered life. Researching and reflecting on Margaret’s life made me deeply consider gender, class, compassion and the Catholic Church as connected to my family and more broadly. The archives from the convent where she lived for over six decades provided no trace of her existence except for a record of being slightly ill twice in the 1960s… no photographs, no accounts of any activities or interests.

I made this music as a gift to Margaret who was incarcerated for life for giving birth and to mark her life in some small way.

The pieces unfold in field recordings from the small town in Western Victoria where she grew up and the Abbotsford Convent where she lived. The pieces started as organ pieces roughly recorded from the chapel there (excerpts of which are included) and were then remade using bells, voices, organs and string. Many thanks to the all women contributors who helped realise these pieces through their wonderful musicality and sensitivity to Margaret’s story.

credits

released October 1, 2021

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Originally released on Lost Tribe Sound. See Catalog: losttribesound.bandcamp.com
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ACL 2021 ~ TOP TEN AMBIENT - "This album is itself a small mercy and a great gift. The sad irony is that it takes the trappings of the church ~ the choir, the organ, the bells ~ and wraps around Margaret’s story like the comfort never afforded her in real life." - (Richard Allen) A CLOSER LISTEN

"Margaret Hammett Lived unearths a particularly painful human story. It’s a worthy tribute and a sobering listen." - (Tim Clarke) DUSTED MAG

"A suite of absolutely stunning beauty, with strings, organ, bells and voices (and yes, some subtle electronic touches). It's gorgeously performed, poised music worthy of its subject matter." - (Peter Hollo) UTILITY FOG

"Dupé navigates quite easily from neoclassical, film music and folk to drones, ambient and electro-acoustic music. The beautifully often ethereal and mysterious vocals stand out here, in addition to the beautiful and varied instrumental interpretation." - (Jan Willem Broek) DE SUBJECTIVISTEN

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Total run time: 28 minutes

Singers:
Auður Zoega
Alina Nayton
Lucy Roleff
Claire Deak
Brooke Wolsley

Viola, Violin by Lizzie Welsh

Pipe organ, pump organ, cello, viola, bells, dulcitone, vibraphone, radio, field recordings by Tony Dupé

Mastered by Calyx

Thanks to all the performers for their passion and sensitivity and also to Alina, Claire and Natasha for listening feedback and reflections on the work in progress. Much love and thanks to Auntie Val and my mum June for conversations about Margaret. Thanks to Fiona Wahr and Melbourne Polytechnic Research Seeding Grant.

© Tony Dupé | Lost Tribe Sound LLC
℗ Settled Scores LLC

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Tony Dupé Melbourne, Australia

Tony Dupé is a composer and producer who creates music connected to place, stories and the experience of sound. He loves musical instruments and plays a range but is happily a master of none.

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