In 1941, during the Soviet invasion, my grandfather fled from Tabriz to Tehran. With him he brought the language of his mother Azari to Tehran, where Farsi was spoken. This audio sketch contains parts of songs he brought from Tabriz that, after eighty years, he recounted and translated for me to the best of his ability in Los Angeles, CA. Through sound I hope to hold the migration of a translated lullaby and my own longing for a place as familiar as my bones and as distant as the fading smell on my aunt’s suitcase at the airport. When words and memories are lost, when languages have melted into one another, all that's left is an echo of what might have once been there. It is that sensation not the precision of the lyrics or the purity of language and melody I try to give a home to in this audio sketch.

Music for Isolation was born out of an improvisation of three Philadelphia based artists, (Dominique Matelson, Ryan Albert and Armand Paul). The three quarantined together during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. They created Music for Isolation in an effort to foster a sense of interconnectedness while digesting the unfolding global pandemic. It was recorded with a Singalodeon karaoke machine in the living room of their house.