The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, symbolizes inequality. One of the island’s largest employers, most of its workers come to the U.S. on work-related visas to help their families survive. It blows my mind to imagine the difference between the lives of those who spend hundreds of dollars each night per person to stay here, the people who work to keep it running, and their family members around the globe.
Working on Mackinac myself, I snuck into the cool, lush garden of the Grand Hotel to record songs, mostly songs about hard times. Boat horns and pressure to finish measures quickly in order to shoo mosquitoes color these recordings. The environment speaks to me about persisting inequality in the arrangement of our world.
My Grand Hotel Garden Recordings include:
Claire Bates Music 