Outlook Mixtape: Treasures in the attic

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Four stories of long-forgotten pasts brought to light after rummaging in attics near and far. In 2014, Debayan Sen was cleaning the family attic in Kolkata, India when he made an unexpected discovery: a dusty, old vinyl record called Disco Jazz. What astonished him was that his mother Rupa was on the cover. She had made the album in 1982 and it had sold only a handful of copies. Following the flop, she decided to abandon her dreams of becoming a singer, and didn't talk about it. So Debayan had no idea his very traditional Indian mother had even had a music career. Not only did that attic discovery reveal Rupa’s secret disco past but also that her music had an underground fanbase of millions worldwide. Debayan and Rupa spoke to Emily Webb in 2021. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain compared the sound of the British punk band The Raincoats to "the experience of listening in, from an attic." A strange compliment, but he played their record so many times, he wore it out and so, on a trip to London in the early 90s, he visited a vinyl store in search of another copy. No joy there, but he was told one of The Raincoats' founding members, Ana Da Silva, worked in an antiques shop nearby. Kurt paid her a visit and discovered that Ana and her bandmate Gina Birch had been leading separate lives after the band split up. It had been a decade since they played together. But Kurt's enthusiasm united the band for one last chapter. In an attic in rural France, the diaries of a Nobel Prize-winning author, Annie Ernaux, lay unread for years. As a teenager, she wrote about her feeling of desire and reflections on her sexuality, which felt at odds with strict societal norms of the 1950s. But when her mum found them, she found the content so disturbing, that she burned them. Even though Annie’s diaries didn’t survive, she overcame stigma and shame to turn her experience into proactive, unflinching fiction. Vibeke Venema spoke to Annie in her home in France in 2025. This was a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC. When Antony Penrose dusted off an old journal in the attic of his family farm in the English countryside, it helped him to heal a difficult relationship with his late mother. She was the American war journalist and photographer Lee Miller, but Anthony saw her as a cruel alcoholic during much of his childhood. Two years after her death, he headed up to the loft in search of family photographs, and stumbled upon his mother's reports from World War Two. The discovery helped him realise what his mother had been through and better understand their strained relationship. Anthony spoke to Jo Fidgen in 2025. Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Elena Angelides Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707 (Photo: A transparent 60-minute cassette tape on a white background with a white label with the words: The Outlook Mixtape. Credit: Getty Images)