The Song That Found Me: Singing My Grandmother’s Memory

@just.iammaria

She/her

“Listening to stories from older generations about past events can generate a ‘historical consciousness’ about oneself (Rantala, 2022) or an ‘intergenerational self’ (Fivush, 2019). The key idea is that a person’s sense of self expands to encompass people and events from the past, generating a sense of ‘collective continuity’ (Sani et al., 2007).”
El-Khalil et al. (2025, p. 16)

I have always loved stories, especially those from my own family, which were often about the lives my parents left behind before migrating to New Zealand. Their stories were tied to dramatic events, as Croatia (then known as Yugoslavia) was reshaping itself in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Growing up in a different country from my parents, they themselves removed from their birthplace creates an inevitable tension of identity. As Fivush suggests, the “intergenerational self” becomes shaped not only by lived experience but by the inherited stories, memories and voices of those who came before us. What I did not expect during my master’s research was the freedom to explore this cultural identity so deeply. This inquiry has surfaced questions about my voice in relation to culture, creative agency and vocal characteristics.

Deepening the questions and themes within I am Maria! has ignited creativity, openness and a childlike freedom. I am slowly losing the fear of not fitting in, of being “wrong.” Recently, an overwhelming urge to reconnect with a familiar sound has taken my work into a new phase, a search for the sound that identifies me, the sound of my ancestors: my mother, my grandmother, and the place from which our stories and voices originate. It resonates within me, despite my birth occurring elsewhere.

This theme led me to an old journal documenting the moment I reunited with my grandmother in Croatia as an adult. It was deeply moving, the last time I had seen her I was ten. During that visit she told stories, recited poems, and sang to me.

I wrote down the lyrics of one of those songs. Now, all these years later, I found myself staring at those same words, hearing her voice in my memory:

ne zaboravime ti

ni naše plavo more

valovi naše ljubavi

daleko je more

ne vidiš mu kraja

tamo u daljini sam

nebom se spaja

o more more

i morski vali

zašto ste prevrnuli

moj čamac mali

I began to sing. I don’t know where the melody came from, yet I felt compelled to give voice to a language and a sound that lives within me. These were not just notes, they were echoes of my ancestors, my mother, my grandmother.

Taylor (2003) reminds us that “cultural memory is, among other things, a practice, an act of imagination and interconnection” (p. 82). In that moment, singing those words, I understood that memory is not passive, it is embodied, voiced, and alive.

If you would like to see how this research resonates in my performance work, you are welcome to visit my Artistic Works page here

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References

El-Khalil, Tudor, C., Caculidis, D., Nedelcea, & Catalin. (2025). Impact of intergenerational trauma on second-generation descendants: a systematic review. BMC Psychology, 13(1), 668. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-03012-4

Taylor, D. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385318