Bringing Angelina Jane Burke Currey’s Story to Life Through Music
As part of my ongoing ABC Biography series—an approach inspired by Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings—I’m experimenting with artificial intelligence tools to tell family stories in creative ways.
In this series, I’m treating the three parts of the ABC process as separate projects:
- A – a narrative biography based on documented genealogical research
- B – a song inspired by the ancestor’s life story
- C – AI-generated interpretations such as audio overviews, infographics, and cinematic videos
This post focuses on the musical side of the project.
After researching and writing about Angelina Jane Burke Currey (1836–1901), I wanted to see whether her life story could be transformed into music.
Angelina’s life seems especially suited to a ballad.
Born in Kentucky in 1836, Angelina came of age as America pushed westward. She married Hiram M. Currey in Missouri in 1856 and soon established a home in Kansas during one of the most turbulent periods in frontier history. She lived through the Bleeding Kansas era, the Civil War, railroad expansion, economic uncertainty, and the realities of raising a large family in nineteenth-century America.
That kind of story feels less like a modern pop song and more like something that might have been sung around a parlor piano or shared as a frontier ballad.
To create the song, I first used AI to write lyrics based on Angelina’s documented life story.
I then took those lyrics to Suno.com, using the prompt:
Ballad in a style similar to the 1860 to 1880s
Since no photograph of Angelina has survived in my collection, I used AI to create a historically inspired image representing the world she knew—without attempting to invent her likeness.
Using that image along with the audio created by Suno, I assembled a video in Canva and uploaded it to YouTube so it could be easily shared.
The result is below.
I’ll admit that creating songs about ancestors still feels a little magical.
Genealogy traditionally gives us names, dates, places, and documents. Music adds something different—a sense of emotion, movement, and storytelling that may connect with family members who would never sit down to read a narrative report.
Is it historically perfect? Of course not.
But as a creative way to honor an ancestor’s life and spark interest in family history, I think it works surprisingly well.
And honestly? It’s fun.
If you missed the earlier biography post about Angelina, that was the “A” portion of this project. I’ll be sharing the “C” portion—Google Notebook LM interpretations—in a future post.
For now, I hope you enjoy Angelina’s song.