HARP FOR THE KING OF POP: FABIOLA HARPER

The fabulous Fabiola Harper playing Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"

Earlier in this blog, I referenced one Fabiola Harper, a young harpist from Chile with a great talent. 

I discovered Fabiola on a blog called The Virtual Harp.  According to the VH, Fabiola was born in Cauquenes, Chile and now resides in Japan.

I was excited to find Fabiola, because she is a great example of good pop harping.  Let’s look at her tribute to Michael Jackson, which she plays on a Paragauyan harp:

Well, what do you think?!

Does it Work?  “Billie Jean” played on a HARP??

The answer, in my opinion, is a resounding YES!

Fabiola’s performance flies in the face of the “bad pop harp music” stereotype.  Yes, many people inwardly groan inside when a harpist takes the stage and announces they are going to play The Beatles or some other type of pop music.  After scouring YouTube for examples of “pop harp,” I found out why.  I don’t want to discourage harpers who want to venture into pop music, but suffice to say that before you post something on YouTube, you might want to have a few of your closest friends give you their honest feedback.  

And it greatly disappoints me that I did not find Fabiola in YouTube’s long list of search results.  What other treasures am I missing? 

Fabiola’s harp-playing is not something you want to miss.  The example above (go back and listen if you haven’t already) is no fluffy, half-baked, sappy harp rendition; this is a well-done acoustic version of a great pop song that has merit in and of itself as a solid performance that demonstrates artistry and creativity. 

Fabiola is a bonafide harper.  She is unusal in that she has great dexterity in her left hand:  a solid repeating bassline is one of the things that make this interpretation work so well.  At one point, her playing is so full that it sounds like she is playing with a couple of guitarists, but no-o-o, it is her and her alone.   That moment is very impressive to me; she skillfuly builds the song to that point and at that point, the listener is really captured emotionally.  This, too, is unsual in harp-playing, which is often an emotionally flat landscape of “pretty.”   In defense of bad pop harp players, the paradigm of the harp is not one that easily lends itself to pop or music — it is a hard instrument to play!  Watching Fabiola play, the average person would not understand just how exceptional her playing is.  But people who play the harp do.  She has accomplished something with this performance that I have not yet seen other harpers do. 

This clip illustrate sone of the challenges that lever harpists playing pop music run into:  what to do when the song changes key.  Since the pitch of a string must be raised manually by flipping a sharping lever (as opposed to a pedal harp, where you shift a note from flat to sharp to neutral, etc.), changing key in the middle of a song (something the Beatles loved to do) can be difficult.  Fabiola works the key change in pretty well, although slowing the song down just a tad would make flipping that lever a bit smoother.  Fabiola also has a very version of The Beatles’ “All My Loving,” and some good, traditional-sounding salsa or mariachi sorts of things (I can’t remember the actual term).

I don’t know what plans Fabiola has, but it seems she could really take her pop-harp style somewhere, especially if she could also sing with it and produce some original material.

I am highly encouraged by my discovery of Fabiola. 

May she take the world by storm!

HARP ART

When I first heard a harp being played, an image instantly came to me.  As the notes rolled from the fingers of the harpist, I felt as though something in me had broken free.   The image I got was this:  each note rolled out like a pearl from a necklace that had just broken; the pearls, still warm from the throat of the beautiful woman who had worn the necklace, falling to the ground in a sort of slow-motion cascade of sensation.

That image may be the impetus behind one of my long-time fantasies:  building a beaded harp sculpture.  The picture above is a vague representation of what a beaded harp might look like.  I envision more detail on the strings, such as you see here:

The harp could be built using the “guts” of a concert piano, erected vertically and strung with beads.  Coincidentally, the guts of a piano is called a “harp.”  Here’s an image of one:

Harp of a Piano

It seems to me that an old piano harp, if it could be anchored to stand upright on the edge of a cliff somewhere, would make a beautiful piece of sculpture.  Do you agree?  Can’t you just see the harp with beaded strings — some just a straight row of beads, and others with fancy patterns like the example above?

When I met John w. Lefelhocz and saw his beaded bicycle (pictured below) this only added to my fervor to make a beaded harp.  I tried to talk John, who looks magnificent without a shirt,  into building the sculpture with me, but it turns out he had some kind of a life.  People come up with the oddest excuses sometimes: he “finds it hard to get out from under his work” (see below).

Here's John moments after he reached for a gear on the top shelf. Turns out there were a whole bunch of them up there.

Here he is yet again hard at work.  In this photo (which I should mention was taken by Tim Creamer) one gets a sense that John “looks down” on other people, but he isn’t like that at all.  He has several miniature bicycles which I heartily lust after.  (My other fanatical interest is miniatures).  [Note: my sense of humor is so subtle, that I have to point out that that last nonsequiter about the miniature bicycles is intentional].

Anyway, I try to coerce artists into building my beaded harp at every opportunity, because I have no life and no time.  But, they do — so, why shouldn’t they do what I want?  People are so irrational!   

All right, if you don’t get my sense of humor, you’ll just have to take my word for it.  Harp art is highly underrated, and in fact I think the market is wide open.

Consider this, for example.  I was reading in a 1950′s “Guide for HomeMakers” that “having a nice little harp set up in the corner of a room can really brighten up a room.”  LOL!  My God!  Did the author really have no idea how much harps can cost?  Try $179,000.  Here’s one on sale for $129,000 — a much better deal for that “corner curio”: 

Sale! Just $129,000

While the harp pictured above could truly be called a work of art, I’ve actually seen even fancier harps than this.  But we’re talking about the Louis XV model, so here’s a close-up of its crown: 

Louis XV Crown Detail

Technically, the crown is the part at the top of the column, and it is usually flat, so that cats can sit on it.   Remember the column?  the “tree like” part that my cat would take a running leap at and scramble up with her scritchy claws, turning my $25,000 gold harp into a Weeble Wobble doll.  Here’s a picture of a regular harp crown: 

The "Cat Perch," aka Harp Crown (flat seating area on top)

But evidently, it doesn’t have to be flat.   Ah… the memories…

 Kittens AND harps.  Sometimes life is too good to be true.

 

MY SECOND ELECTRIC HARP

Lyon & Healy Silhouette Electric Lever Harp

 

Here she is… my big red beauty.  

Serial No. 5. 

My red Silhouette electric lever harp. 

Actually, not so big — it weighs about 17 pounds and can be carried over one’s shoulder in its case.

 

           You can see that it has no “soundboard;” instead, there is a solid piece of wood.    

                              

                                                 here’s a picture of the harp from the front:   

       

                             

          OK, just kidding, but actually it looks kinda like that – it is literally just 2″ wide or so.

          The sound doesn’t come from the soundboard, as it would a hollow pedal or celtic harp.  As the string is plucked and vibrates, the pickup transmits it to an amplifier.  Heavily technical explanation, I know.  The truth is,  I don’t know how it works, or why they couldn’t do this before.  The strings are nylon but I was always told before that you couldn’t electrify a nylon-strung harp the way you would amplify a wire-strung electric guitar, because the pickups didn’t work on nylon strings.  I know I used electromagnetic pickups when I built my first electric harp.  The nylon string pickups used on this harp must be some type of piezo.  I’ll have to look into this more later; I recall buying a piezo pickup system for my nylon guitar that was about as useful as a plastic napkin.

          Anyway, Lyon & Healy built this harp.  Lyon & Healy are one of the two pre-eminent harp makers in the US:  There’s Salvi, and then Lyon & Healy.  I’ve always preferred L&H for aesthetic reasons, but even so, it took L&H — or any harpmaker in the US, for that matter — a looonnnng time to build a good, “gigable” electric harp. 

          The Silhouette is L&H’s first attempt at an electric lever harp.  They first came out with an electric-acoustic pedal harp, that was pretty expensive ($23,000).  Which is actually not so much more than a regular harp, so I think price was the reason it didn’t sell very well.  It didn’t sell, because it didn’t fit the paradigm.  If people want to play electric harp, it is probably because they want to be heard over other stuff (for one).  That means they are performing in different kinds of venues… loud venues that might be hard to get in and out of.

          Perhaps, if anyone cares to know, I should explain what a lever harp is.  If you look at the picture above, you’ll see two rows of pins, and then some black and red levers.  When you flip up one of the levers, you are shortening the string, so you raise it’s pitch by half a note.  The harp has 7 notes:  c, d, e, f, g, a, and b.  So if it is tuned in C and you flip up one of black levers (“f” strings on the harp are black or blue; “c” strings are red), you are selecting an F#. 

          The lever harp is much more portable, but of course has some pretty serious limitations.  I often have to fudge stuff in order to play it.  Like, the Beatles’ “Fixin’ a Hole;” instead of modulating, I simply sing the modulation and don’t play any conflicting notes underneath, thereby creating the illusion that I have performed the song.  haha!

          I do love my electric harp.  I can play with reverb, distortion, chorus, and any effect an electric guitar player can use. 

          My dream of seeing the harp in a truly rock context may never be fulfilled in my lifetime, but I can at least have fun in the meantime.

BUILDING A STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Here’s my laugh for the day from a blog called HarpMaking:

“I like harp music, and the harp doesn’t look all that difficult to play,” says Donna Menke.

ROTFLMA!

In consideration of the actual pain in one’s brain when learning to play the pedal harp — thinking about 7 different pedals, each with 3 different positions; reading a measure or two ahead in order to pre-place the notes and getting ready to shift pedals; maintaining good posture and hand position, etc. — that is quite a quaint comment.  Innocent, but humorous to me.

However, Donna is interested in playing a Celtic harp, not a pedal harp, so at least she won’t have to worry about pedal changes.

I was actually extremely interested in what Donna had to say on her blog.  For one, she is obviously pretty good working with her hands, and that alone interests me.

But Donna goes on to talk about something quite dear to my heart.  She listened to some harp music one day, and decided she wanted to build one.  She settled on the Limerick Harp, which you can buy as a kit from a company called  Musicmaker’s Kits.  They are a nice little company, she says; and I can attest to that.  They helped me begin to fulfill my dream of playing truly progressive electric harp, because I used the Limerick harp kit to build my own first electric harp.

Back in 1979, when I first got this idea, there wasn’t any such thing as an electric harp, or at least, I hadn’t found one.  The problem was that most harps had nylon strings, and pickups didn’t work too good on nylon.  Andreas Vollenweider was out there doing his stuff, but he had invested a lot of money in his harp and I didn’t have that kind of money then.

Many years passed until one night, my search exhausted, I was out riding my bike at night with this girl I wanted to impress and be friends with and so on.  Since it was about 2 am and very dark, I didn’t see there was a big fat wire strung across the path until almost getting “egg sliced.”

That night I had a dream — a literal night-time dream — in which I simply added electric guitar pickups to a wire-strung harp.

And that’s what I did.  I got the kit, and with the help of Billy Rhinehart, a unique guitar luthier who makes sculpted guitar bodies in the shapes of women, fish, birds, and so on (pretty cool and he has a nice CD, too), we put the harp together and got it wired up.  We used bass pickups, because they would pick up 4 or 5 strings per bar, and mounted them along the neck of the harp:

My first electric harp, Pickup view

Here’s another view of the harp – the control knobs:

That little hole at the top right is the output jack.  The harp hooks up to an amp and regular guitar effects units with a regular electric guitar cord.

Anyway, this is the harp that allowed me to finally break in to the kind of music I wanted to play.   This harp was my heaven.  I could add reverb, distortion, chorus, delay — any kind of effect that an electric guitar used.

The first song I learned was “Face in a Crowd,” by Tom Petty.  I just really liked that song.  I then recorded a few 80′s kind of trancey-dancey instrumental things.  Unfortunately, right around the time I got this harp (1996), my life fell apart and I didn’t touch the instrument for a long time.  On the stairway to heaven, I got stuck on the landing for a while, a pretty long while.  But I’m happy to say that my old harp now has a new home; I finally bought a commercially made electric harp; and over the month of December 2009 I hope to finally get some good recordings done.

I will see if I can post some of the early recordings of this harp, although I will have to do it later since they are on a different computer, which is in the hospital.

NOTE:  If you get that NASTY VIRUS that tells you you have a virus and tries to sell you fixes — this virus can infect your computer via Firefox just by having it hooked up to the internet, bypassing McAfee — download Windows Defender.

BLOG REPORTS

I used to have a late-night radio show.  I would talk to myself, play records (yes back then it was all vinyl), interview myself playing a made-up character  (it was a late-night show), tell stories I thought were funny (it was a late-night show), talk about dreams I had the night before, and so on.  Did I mention it was a late-night show?

I didn’t think anyone was listening.   It was just me in a room having a good time.  One day, someone called me up and said a group of people wanted to meet me.  A group?  I guess there was a little fan club who tuned into my show every night and played cards and drank and thought I was funny. I was flattered, but I still think there were only four people who ever heard my show.

The same is probably true about this blog. That’s ok.  I’m still on my quest for true innovation in harp music. And when I find something really worthwhile, I’m going to put it out there on iReport, or in a wiki, or something like that. So please.   If you are “out there” and have news to share about innovative harp stuff, let me know.

When I had the idea to start this blog, I spent a lot of time looking through YouTube videos. I saw things that looked promising, but turned out to be pretty bad renditions of Stairway to Heaven and such.  But I made a discovery today at The Virtual Harp.  The Virtual Harp showed me that there ARE things out there.  My discovery today was Fabiola Harper, and I’m going to save a discussion about her for later.  Suffice to say right now, she plays a good  “Billie Jean” on the harp. Yeh, that’s getting somewhere.

So today, I decided to check out some other blogs to expand my research.  So from time to time I’ll make posts about the various blogs I have found.

The The Virtual Harp is a nice blog that is getting international viewership and has a few nods to innovation.  Talks about giving lessons online with a computer cam, for one thing.  I got set up to do that recently, but the lessons fell through.  I’m glad other people are doing it.  There are some other nuggets I’m going to have to explore and talk about later.  But a Metallic entry shows some promise.

The Celtic Harper covers some good territory, including an entry on the “harp guitar.”  You can see Andy McKee play this weird thing; quite good.  I have an ebay search alert for “electric harp,” and although I have yet to get any results for “electric harp,” I do get alerts that harp guitars are available.  And harp clocks, whatever they are.  Interesting entries on a cross-strung harp player, a double harp (for Siamese twins?) and the best rendition of  Stairway to Heaven ( by Anne Roos in Sacramento) that I’ve seen.

That’s it for now.

PORCH LIGHTS AND MEATBALLS

There’s a silver moonball balanced atop dark scraggly branches that lace a midnight blue sky. 

Now the clouds are moving over it.

It’s only 8:00 pm, but it feels like it could be midnight.  I only got five hours of sleep last night, and the cold I’ve been battling seems to be winning. 

At 7 am this morning, I said goodbye to another friend.  My room mate, and a great one at that.  I got up at 5:30 for a final chat, and to see him off.  I hadn’t known him all that long.  Two months?  Long enough to laugh together; to discuss life A-Z; to show our human side.  Long enough to feel I had found a good friend, and long enough to get choked-up and teary-eyed upon saying goodbye.   Him, too.

He used to leave the porch light on for me.  Sometimes I’d forget to turn it off when I came home, and it’d be on all night and day, until the next time I came home in the dark.  And when I did, it was my moonball, lighting up the sidewalk.

There were other things that lit up my life while Bert was here.  Meatballs and real sauce, for instance. 

I came in one night, after flicking off the porch light, and he said, “You know, today was such a cool, misty day.  I miss coming in on a day like this, and smelling real sauce that’s been cooking all day on the stove… like my mother used to make.”

Nice sentiment.

“I want other people to have that experience of coming home to the smell of real Italian sauce.  I’m going to make a big pot of it.  I cook the meatballs right in the sauce,” he said.  “I’ll make a big pot and you can invite your friends over.”

Even nicer.

It wasn’t about “meatballs and sauce.”  It wasn’t about “making dinner” for a bunch of people.  It was a desire to give others the feeling of comfort and nourishment.  A desire to light the way for others.  That was my friend Bert.

The sauce was good.  We all had a great time and laughed our heads off.  There was lots left over.

Now it was time for him to go.  Back to his family.  Back to the land of skis, snow, and mountain lions.  I was happy that his dream of going home had come true.  Isn’t that everyone’s dream? 

“Keep playing that harp,” he said, as we stood under the porch light.  As he drove away, I flicked it off, and went back inside my quiet house.

The sauce will be even better tomorrow.

WIND HARPS

“Across Puget Sound from Seattle, near the Agate Pass Bridge at the north end of Bainbridge Island, stands a forlorn sight: a two-story harp, perilously close to an eroding cliff, surrounded by young alder trees that screen it from the very breezes that could bring it to life.”

So Ron Konzak describes his giant Puget Sound Wind Harp – the culmination of a dream — in repose.

I learned about giant wind harps  in the 80s, and was immediately intrigued.  Any harpist or harper that has played outside knows that a sudden breeze can produce mighty strong overtones on the harp, some of which are rather delightful bursts of color.

I finally had a chance to visit the Puget Sound Wind Harp around 2000.   We parked and hiked through the overgrown brush.  I was eager with anticipation.  I caught sight of the harp’s mammoth spine, and my heart was in my mouth.  Seagulls cawed overhead and the water of the bay was visible as we pressed on through the brambles. But much to my disappointment, as I got closer I could see that the harp was in the state described above, its huge strings (about 1″ thick), broken and flapping idly in the wind.  No mysterious overtones lifting magically from the strings at the behest of a steady breeze.  No melodious bursts of harmonics or even a bird inadvertently plucking a string by landing on it.  Luckily, many other people have had the opportunity to enjoy Konzak’s windharp, even though I did not.

For years, I had wanted to sit or lay in the chamber of the harp, and experience “wind music” with my whole body.  The amazing thing about music, of course, is that it is all about vibration. I used to ask friends to put their fingers in their ears and bite the end of my guitar as I played the instrument. No one ever denied me.  With wild, trusting abandon they all complied cheerfully with my request. Just why, I’ll never know. But — there WAS a reason for my request.  I wanted them to experience the “internal stereo” created by biting the guitar stock and allowing the vibrations to transfer into their heads.   Very cool effect.

Anyway, I imagined that being inside the harp’s chamber, which is where the strings resonate, would be a similar effect x 1000.  I may never find out.

However, there is some good news!  Konzak reports that a restoration/relocation effort is underway, so I may get the chance after all.

Another early wind harp was built in Vermont.  Said a visitor regarding the Chelsea, Vermont wind harp:  “I visited this harp many times in 1973. The horses on the farm where it was located would put their heads in the base and listen. It was truly a cosmic experience and it had a life force to it!”

Evidently, the harp is no longer there.

While there are several other excellent examples of wind harps, I want to highlight Konzak’s, because I believe his was the first, and it inspired many other works.

I’d like to include one more example.  The Eastern Kentucky Heritage Monument, an arts/economic development project designed to create jobs and increase tourism, aims to have the three largest wind harps in the world.  Dr. Henry Gurr, a nationally recognized expert in Aolian harps, is acting as consultant.  The harp pictured below is over twice as tall as the Puget Sound harp, which is 26 feet in height.

Professor Gurr

Harp on, wind.

WHY CATS PLAY THE HARP

Ever see that book, ‘Why Cats Paint?”  It is a charming book, which you can see depicted at left.

I used to wonder how they made those pictures, but after my cat started to play the harp, I stopped wondering.

Some cats are just natural artists.

I found this out in a surprising way.  One night, Ken and I were asleep, when we were awakened by a loud PLONG. 

I said to Ken, “Did you hear that loud PLONG?”

He said “Yes, it sounded just like a loud PLONG.”  Ken is the son of a linguist and is very good with words. 

I had an idea.   “Go find out what it is,” I suggested.  I am the daughter of an inventer and am very good with ideas.

Being the good husband, and not having any guns handy, Ken picked up the next best thing — an upright vaccuum cleaner — and went into the living room with it kinda slung over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

I asked him later what he had intended to do with the vaccuum cleaner – remove all the cat hair from the assailant’s clothing? 

But – back to the story – As Ken made his way into the living room, I crept behind at a safe distance and peered around the corner.  My little cat, Scrabble, was sitting on the base of my pedal harp, gazing admiringly at the strings.  With an ever-so-intent, almost reverent gaze, she slowly reached up her paw again, and plucked one of the lower strings. 

PLONG. 

The sound of the plucked string reverberated eerily into the stillness of Boston Parking Lot Air with Fricasee of Cat Fight, which is what filled our rooms in the evenings, since our apartment overlooked a parking lot with a large feral cat population.

So that was how we discovered that our cat, Scrabble, was a natural harpist.  Once she got a taste of the beauty of harp playing, she continued to pluck a string a couple times a week.  She would sit and stare at the harp, reach out a paw and PLONG it with an air of entrancement and mystification. 

To play or not to play

Here’s a picture of a cat contemplating whether or not to play Hasselmans’ “La Source.”  But since most cats don’t like water, I don’t think she’s going to go for it.

This is the same sort of gazing that my cat used to do.

I guess I have to say that although it’s not be as cute as Hamster on a Piano, <a href=”http://“>

it was still pretty entertaining.  Our theory, actually, as to why Scrabble played the harp, is that the harp’s strings were a sort of “mouse-tail impetus.”  The exaggerated “mouse tail” served as a super-stimulus– a compelling enticement that she simply could not resist.  Of course, she heard me playing the harp several hours a day, so perhaps part of its attraction was the fact that she could actually make a sound like that, too.  My other cat, Deedle, used to turn the lights off and on with her paws, after all.  One can’t deny that there must be some pleasure for an animal in being able to manipulate its physical surroundings.

“Why my cat plays the harp” was all quite entertaining until the midnight PLONGING turned into crown-teetering.

Scrabble was always very athletic and perhaps, in her zeal to “check out those big mouse tails,” she began running over to the harp and climbing straight up its column to sit on the crown.  OMG!  The sound of cat claws scritching up the column of a $25,000 gold leaf instrument is not something I’d call cute OR entertaining.  Neither was the sight of my harp teetering like one of those Bil-a-Bong dolls that are hyper-weighted on the bottom to keep them from tipping over.  Because my harp of course was not a Bil-a-Bong doll. 

The funny thing about this, if there was such a thing, is how perfectly proud she looked, gripping the crown with her claws as the harp wobbled and spun around on its base — never once actually tipping the harp over.

After a while, and about 56,000 squirts of a water bottle, Scrabble’s penchant for “crown toppling” subsided, as did her midnight plonging.

But I still believe that some part of her, perhaps, just wanted to be a harpist like me.

 

p.s.  Racoons play the harp, too.

ORCHESTRATIONS OF HARP PREJUDICE: DON’T CALL ME “HARP!”

Did you know that such a thing as Harp Prejudice exists?

If you are a harpist trying to do non-traditional harp music, then you know what I’m talking about. 

You put up a sign:  “Harpist seeks drummer/bass player” and are deluged with replies about “Yeh we’d love to play with a harmonica… ‘das kewl…” etc.

There is a long history of angel-saturated imagery being associated with the harp, and while this does often represent the type of melodious, calming music most people associate with the harp, it also limits people’s percetions about what other types of applications are possible.

"Harp Cage," by sculptor Georgia Rodger, 2007 (United Kingdom)

Witness a recent performance on “American Idol,” when a harpist (ANYONE KNOW HER NAME?) sang and played a nice pop version of Roberta Flack’s “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” — and did a great job in my opinion.  The judges openly admitted “fear of harp schmaltz” before she began to play, and then dissed her Salzedian technique of rhythmically knocking on the soundboard as “beating up on the harp.”  Another judge said, “I’m confused by this music.”  The judge’s prejudged expectation of “what harp music is” totally precluded her ability to experience and appreciate the performance on its own terms because her mind was too busy with stuff like, “Hey, this is pop music.  But wait, it’s on a harp. Harps can’t play pop music.  –frazzle click snap– BRAIN SHORT-OUT.”

My own experiences with harp prejudice began almost as soon as I began to play the instrument, but in a slightly different capacity.  To describe that, I have to go back to the beginning. 

It was many years ago.  I was a freshman at Earlham College, flailing around with astronomy, and “speed reading” War and Peace.  (It’s about war, and it’s about peace, and I think it has something to do with Russia). 

One day, I decided to go to an orchestra concert.  I sat bored while the musicians tuned up their instruments in that fracas-sounding way orchestra musicians do.   They started to play and it was all very typical orchestra stuff.  Good, but typical.  Pleasant.  But then, from the side of the stage, in swooped a harpist with his harp on a dolly.  He plunked it down, pulled up a stool, flung out his coat tails behind him as he sat down, tilted back the harp, and played his first note — seemingly right on cue.

This was the first time I had seen a harpist perform on a public stage, and in fact only the second time in my life I had ever seen a harpist perform at all.

I was transfixed.

I went back to my room in a trance, called my father and said I was leaving Earlham, where I had a full scholarship (DOH!!!!!!!!!!!  Do you have any idea what the tuition is there??), to go and learn how to play the harp at some school I had never even heard of before.

Which I did. 

My father.. now gone… never even questioned this.  It may have been one of the most loving things he ever did for me.

But I guess I modeled myself a bit too much on that Richmond Symphony Harpist, because I found that I was always late for orchestra, and always missing my cues in pieces. 

I don’t think the conductor ever knew my name.  He just called me “Harp.”

We’d be playing a piece and I’d be looking dreamily at Carlos, the cello player, miss my entrance cue, and suddenly jolt back to reality upon hearing the conductor yell out “HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAARRRRRPPPP,” bringing the whole orchestra to a dead standstill, and waking up Professor Ahrendt, who often took his 3 o’clock nap during orchestra practice. 

How come the conductor never yelled “VVIIIIOOOLLLLAAAAA” at him, I wonder?  He could have at least asked him,”Ahrendt you even going to play one note?”  (Because I’ll bet that Dr. Ahrendt had never heard a joke like that before, and it might have helped to keep him awake.)  But no, as long as I was there, he never made one comment about Dr. Ahrendt’s delightfully charming snoring.  He (Dr. Ahrendt) was probably considered too nice a person, whereas I was the Evil Harp Player Who Was Always Late.

The conductor and his girlfriend, the first violinist, never did like me.  Evidence of their dislike culminated at my senior recital.  As I finished and looked out onto a madly clapping and hooting crowd that had risen to its feet — OK, so at least 98% of them were friends or paid friends, but at least all of them were madly clapping and hooting like good friends or paid friends do –  I noticed the conductor and his girlfriend had remained staunchly, quite determinedly, seated.  He was frowning and had his arms crossed.  I wonder why they even bothered to come?  Morbid curiosity, or more likely, it was just blatant evidence of Harp Prejudice rearing its ugly head.  (Cuz it couldn’t have been that I was a BAD HARPIST, or had messed up in my recital, or anything like THAT.)

Harp Prejudice is everywhere, don’t you know.  I’m loading my harp into the car and total strangers cackle, “Look, she’s got heaven in the back seat,” and  ”Where are your wings?”  and so on.

You can’t escape it, you see.  It follows you everywhere you go.  I have lost more jobs, more friends, and more money due to Harp Prejudice, than almost any other thing in my life.  That’s the tragedy of it all — and no one even talks about it, because it is the Invisible Suffering.

An acquaintance of mine, a photographer, recently told me that he gets anywhere between $2,000 and $3,000 when he shoots a wedding.  Now, that’s great for him, and in my opinion, he’s worth every penny.  But I’ve never been able to charge near that amount to play harp at a wedding, at least in my area.  Why is that, you ask?  You KNOW why!  Harp Prejudice!!!!!

Yes, you see — it is everywhere that harps are.

But now, you can help to stop the destructive force in society known as Harp Prejudice.  Simply send me a check, and I’ll do my best to fight Harp Prejudice everywhere.   (I’ll start in bars first, since you can find a lot of people there whose opinion is more easily swayed.)

So, yes.  You can help. You can make a difference.  The first step always starts with YOU.

Help stop Harp Prejudice.  Check out other kinds of harp music.  Don’t make angel jokes.  And, most importantly, give harpsists money whenever you can.

**************************************************************************

P.S.  Humor is always a risky thing.  Lest anyone think I don’t take matters of real prejudice seriously, think again…  It has brought misery to people I love.   Humor is one way to deal with things and put things on the agenda for discussion.  My hope is that we humans will one day understand ourselves and one another in such a way that we will no longer need to wail our woes upon one another.  I’m not talking angel jokes here, but the real deal.  I believe that at the deepest level, we are all connected as one spirit, one energy.  So I forgive all my “enemies;” I forgive anyone whose own pain and confusion resulted in mistakes that harmed me or those I love.   I forgive them, and all the other parts of me that I call “them.”

It is interesting to note that the Harp played a symbolic role in speaking out against prejudice: 

The Anti-Slavery Harp:

Music was one of the most powerful weapons of the abolitionists. In 1848, William Wells Brown, abolitionist and former slave, published The Anti-Slavery Harp, “a collection of songs for anti-slavery meetings,” which contains songs and occasional poems. The Anti-Slavery Harp is in the format of a “songster”–giving the lyrics and indicating the tunes to which they are to be sung, but with no music. The book is open to the pages containing lyrics to the tune of the “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, which to 19th-century Americans symbolized the determination to bring about freedom, by force if necessary.

The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-slavery Meetings.
Compiled by William Wells Brown.
Boston: Bela Marsh, 1848.
Music Division. (3-16)

Peace, y’all.

P.S.  I didn’t know when I wrote this post, that there was a song called Don’t Call Me Harp, by Stiff Little Fingers.  It’s about discrimination against Irish immigrants.   I can’t imagine that still happens today, but as you can see, I’m kind of in my own little world here.  Check out the song!

IT AIN’T ABOUT ANGELS ANYMORE

Technically, it's a lyre - but it's also an angel "On the Edge," so I'm using it!

I suppose that I, like many people with ears, was first taken in by the “heavenly, angelic-like tones” of the acoustic harp. 

I admit that when I first heard a harp being played, it was an immersive experience of beauty and release that involved my very soul.

This is an experience that other people have shared – even the legendary Harpo Marx.  Many years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Harpo’s first teacher – Mildred Dilling.  She told me how she had happened to take young Harpo - long before he was known as “Harpo,” of course  - to a harp concert that she had wanted to attend.  As she sat enjoying the music, she suddenly realized that Harpo had vacated his seat.  She got up to look for him, and found him sitting on the floor at the back of the concert hall, tears streaming down his face. 

“Whatever is the matter?” she asked him.  “Don’t you like the music?”

“Oh no,” he said, wiping his face.  “It’s not that at all.  It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.”

My own experience of the harp was also highly charged emotionally.  My mother and I had one day “escaped” from the confines of our Boston home when my father went away on a trip and left the car behind.   Flying up the highway, we felt free and happy, the sensation of salty Martha’s Vineyard air on our skin, whetting our appetite for adventure and fun as we went to visit one of her friends.

The friend’s daughter had a traditional pedal harp, and she agreed to play for us.  As she tilted the instrument back and began to play, I had an inner sensation of breaking free from form; a sort of slow-motion explosion that turned my insides to water. 

The notes rolled off her fingers like a slow-motion movie of a pearl necklace – still warm on the throat of a beautiful woman – breaking and flinging each note, like a distinctly beautiful pearl, into the air in a cascading waterfall of intricate and deliriously beautiful sound.  

And then, since I was only about five years old, I forgot all about it until later.  I’ll talk more later about how I got involved with the harp, but right now I want to say that “harps and angels,” while still very much a reality for many harp-lovers, has become a thing of the past in my own mind, even though, ironically, I live on a road called Angel Ridge.

However, these associations are still very strong in the mind of the average person.  I’ll talk more about “Harp Prejudice” in my next post, but for now I just want to mention that should you mention that you like to play or listen to “rock harp,” the average person’s first assumption is that you are referring to innovative harmonica-playing.  After explaining that, no, you actually mean a harp-harp, skepticism often remains high.   You’ll probably see a rather tight-lipped, pitying grimace, or actually hear a groan as images or even painful memories of fruity harp versions of “Stairway to Heaven” or “Morning Has Broken” come to mind.

And while that stuff still is still out there, for sure, there is a new reality unfolding.  The harp is no longer an instrument that needs to be limited by traditional images and thinking.  Harps can be, and are, part of a dynamic new kind of music.  The harp as an instrument and harp music itself has truly evolved and developed, especially in the last few years, with the harp being incorporated into many more musical genres. 

Advents in the instrument itself, such as the electric harp, have greatly assisted in this transformation.  The electric harp opens a giant new world of possibilities:  the addition of traditional guitar effects like reverb, delay, chorus, and even distortion means that the harp can now, really and truly, rock.

The “market” for modern harp music may be small right now, but my belief is that it will continue to grow as more people find out just what this instrument and its creative players can do.  One of the best-known players in that regard is Deborah Henson Conant, whom I once met briefly outside the Prudential Tower in Boston.  More about her in a story I posted on CNN’s iReport, and a social media blog called Pop Rock Harp; but for now,  suffice to say that in the opinion of myself and at least two other people, she fully deserves the title “Queen of the Blues Harp.”   (p.s.  Search for “Harp Image Updated: Deborah Henson-Conant” on CNN if the link does not work, or by my name as author, wendafay; or try this link directly: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-347527

Deborah Henson Conant live

 I can’t speak for DHC, but as for me, I don’t really like being told that I “play like an angel.”  Now, there are still many situations when I will play the traditional stuff, because a lot of people still want it, and it’s still pretty and everything.  But I would rather focus on more modern applications of the harp and hear something along the lines of, “holy spicole, you rock!” because the type of  music I aspire to is ethereal, yet ultimately highly danceable.  I’m not there yet, but I know exactly where I want to go.

So, what do you think?  Can the harp ever overcome its beleagured ”angel” image, or could we one day see electric harps at least as often as Fender electric guitars?

Am I one of the few who want to see the harp totally rock out, or do people really just want “harps to be harps?”

State your views.