A sessions series continues to lure new audiences to modern harping

Sugar Club is kind of a special venue, says harpist and composer Catriona McKay, speaking on a WhatsApp call from Salvador in Brazil. 

Come Saturday, the Scottish musician will be here in Dublin, performing alongside fiddle-player Chris Stout, in the latest installment of the Sugar Club Harp Sessions. 

The venue, just off Stephen’s Green, has a different vibe to some other harping spots.  

“Because it is putting the harp into a different environment. And I think it's good for the harp. It's good for the musician. It challenges things,” McKay says.

Aibhlín McCrann, the chair of Harp Ireland, says the Harp Sessions at the Sugar Club – an ongoing series which will soon be entering its third year – came about as exactly that: a way to drop the harp into a new space.

“I wanted to take the harp out of the drawing room, even out of the pub,” McCrann says. 

Even though a harp in a pub was a novelty not that long ago, she says. She can remember herself walking in with one, says McCrann. “There was horror all around.”

But the Sugar Club though is one step even further, she says. “A different space, and a space where people weren't expecting either to see or hear harps.”

It’s an emblem

The harp is Ireland’s national emblem – printed on passports, government crests, and pints of Guinness – yet for much of the last century it was rarely heard in everyday life, says  Sandra Joyce, executive dean at the University of Limerick, and a harpist.

“It was an instrument that was associated with the aristocracy,” she says. “So it had that status – very important, complex, separate from traditional music more generally, and from classical music too.”

Under British rule, the image of the harp was usually topped with a crown, Joyce says. After independence, the crown was taken off most harp symbolage, she says. 

The harp became a symbol of autonomy, she says, but the itself wasn’t common in daily Irish culture, it was of the aristocratic class.

One reason the old Irish harping tradition died out was that the aristocratic class lost land and influence, she says. “And could no longer afford to sustain the poet, the harper, in the way that they would have in the past.”

Joyce said that decline is in reversal now – and fast. “It’s a strong marker of Irish identity. It’s on official documents, yes – but it’s also much more accessible now. You hear it in different contexts.”

McCrann says Harp Ireland has worked hard since it was set up in 2016 to encourage harp making, younger musicians, commissioning new work, and performances.

The revival is tangible, says Helen Lawlor, a lecturer at TU Dublin and harp scholar. “We have really healthy numbers of young harp players. It’s supported by a strong infrastructure – ensembles, commissions, opportunities to perform.”

Meanwhile, styles have splintered and cross-pollinated: some harpists are digging into early Irish music, others into jazz, electronics, or global folk influences.

McCrann lists the many artists who have featured at the Sugar Club Harp Sessions.  

Among them, Lisa Canny, the genre-crossing harpist from Mayo, Méabh McKenna with her complex soundscapes, and Aisling Lyons, with her delicate takes on traditional tunes.

All of the harpers are breaking new ground, says McCrann. “Breaking boundaries in terms of their own practice.”

A younger generation are looking to other influences that maybe haven’t been looked at before, she says. Lyons, for example, has played with Tolü Makay, an artist known for her alternative pop, RnB, and soul.

McKay and Stout, meanwhile, are known for their collaboration.

They’ve played their music together for a long time, says McKay, and their performances often include a bit of improvisation too.

Affraic Brophy, who works for Harp Ireland as a programme coordinator, says she sees a young demographic at events. “You see teenagers and children coming to harp festivals.”

Brophy, who is in her early 20s, says many of her friends are into the harp and traditional music. Although, maybe that’s her influence, she says, or maybe not. “There’s a real appetite.”

As McCrann sees it, the changes in how the harp is explored have just brought its symbolic importance to the country to the fore, she says.

When Harp Ireland was vying for Irish harping to be included on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage – which it was, in 2019 – they went out to communities, she says, to ask them how the harp made them feel. 

“They all came back saying the harp is what we are, the harp belongs to all of us,” she says.

It resonates with a younger generation too, she says. The exploration in music and genres also introduces the harp to new communities, she says.

They have a harp ensemble coming up too later in November, playing newly commissioned music – including a piece by the composer and ethnomusicologist Mel Mercier which really challenges the harp, she says.

“It’s one of those instruments that never stopped meaning something,” says McCrann. “Now it’s part of a living culture again – not just a symbol, but a sound people are actually hearing.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.