By Belfast Harpist Ursula Burns
In March 2024, I wrote a show for the "Imagine", Ideas and Politics festival in Belfast entitled How Many Bardic Harpers does it take to change a lightbulb?
I was grateful for the platform provided by the Imagine Festival to discuss my three decades of dangerous harping, reviewing my life's work and artistic journey in a wider context. The show was a deep dive into what got lost in harping history in Ireland between 1600 and 1792 and how that related to cancel culture in the 2020s.
I spent the previous 3 months in Ireland composing, rehearsing and recording my first instrumental harp album to document my self-created style and compositions. I had welts on my fingers from playing so much harp over the winter. Luckily, the focus of this show was mental, not a concert to showcase the harp, but a concept show loaded with a fresh perspective on Ireland's harp story told through the lens of a working Belfast harpist.
When I started performing comedy, I was amazed that I could express anything on stage and had a licence to discuss basic concepts like religion. I was easily able to integrate social commentary into my performances. I could talk about Vaccines, Weather Modification, Chemtrails, Culture, Belfast, The Troubles, Surveillance and Society. There was a basic freedom of speech that I took for granted. Pre-2020 audiences were open and receptive to challenging concepts and perspectives. That changed.
Close on the heels came the psychological warfare of Covid in 2020. There was a tangible seismic shift to a lack of freedom to express basic facts. I could feel a looming cloud of oppression that reminded me of the tension on the falls road in the 80s. I was feeling fear. I did not want to dance with cancel culture.
Luckily, I was writing for the Ideas and Politics festival. The audience were open-minded. They wanted to hear what I had to say and they gave me full permission to say it. The festival created a safe space for me. The people were interested, receptive and supportive.
For this show, I needed to address sensitive topics. Having experienced Britain's Got Talent in 2019, I had a deep understanding of the dark side of the mainstream entertainment industry. The business is ruthless in sacrificing artists for cheap engagement. Everything is structured towards traction through reaction. They set people up to fail. It's pretty dark. BGT impacted my confidence and lust for experimentation on stage. I was unstable in my ability to write and challenge as I had done so freely for many years before.
In 2021, I broke all the rules to sit with my dad as he was passing. In 2022, I lost my Aunty Maggie to turbo cancer. I was grieving. It was a sad time. The deep and traumatic personal losses I witnessed were propelling me to probe into the past. I was empathising with Ireland herself. The loss of language, the loss of land, the loss of a way of life, the mass rocks. The implementation of propaganda through culture disrupted and culture steered. How the arts were targeted to implement the agenda in the 1600s and how I could relate to that in the 2020s
In real life, I was challenging my then-artistic community at Vault Artist Studios for projecting ideologies on the group. I could see it everywhere in the wider arts community of my home town. I found myself resisting censorship on multiple levels. As humans, we have a danger radar. I think this is highly tuned in anyone who has experienced war. No matter how much healing, the residue of growing up in Belfast impacts me.
At Edinburgh Festival 2022, I chose self-censorship in the name of self-preservationation. I was afraid to talk freely on stage. As an artist, it is part of my job to challenge and comment on society, and that got me thinking about the Bardic Harpers. All my creative present-day frustrations gave me insights, clarity and glimmers of understanding about what we lost in the 1600s. How the arts were used to implement agendas and how that was happening again in my lifetime.
I had to find a way to push through and talk about this onstage.
As a Gemini, I am mentally fast and sometimes it is difficult for my fingers to keep up with my brain. Writing this show without a studio space, in my tiny kitchen was problematic. I work on giant sheets of A3 and need visual references. This was by far my most complex work to date. I was nervous about presenting my findings. First, I had to organise my thoughts on paper.
I was on the cusp of breakthroughs. Whisps and shimmers of understanding would hit me. I had lucid moments of clarity. From dreams to downloads to brainwaves of concepts, I was swimming in the magic unconscious soup where creation dwells. I love this process. This is my happy place. Self-imposed glorious solitude with supreme focus and obsession. The conundrum of how to express difficult subject matter, on stage. To surrender so deeply, to become consumed.
To understand my perspective, we have to know what the Bunting Festival is and why it was important to the modern harping culture.
In 1792 in a bid to preserve a dying artform. A Belfast organisation with a quest for preserving knowledge created an event on 11- 14 July 1792 called The Harpers Assemble. 10 harpers answered the call and travelled from all over Ireland to perform with their harps in The Assembly Rooms. Edward Bunting documented their style and compositions in manuscripts and his work forms the bedrock of Irish Traditional Harp music. The work was vitally important and did achieve its goal of saving the art form.
The further back in history we go the less information we have. They say history is written by the victors and I would add that it is ALWAYS written and recorded from the perspective of an agenda.
I believe that by 1792, aspects of our harping culture had already fallen through the net. We know that because we lost our language, land and way of life. Our culture was destroyed and then reformed. The Bunting Festival was successful. It threaded our ancient music through to the modern day but I believe it was also part of the reformation of Ireland. A powerful essence of our culture had already fallen through the cracks. At some point between 1600s and 1792 the harpers lost their danger. The space between the documented story and reality is what interests me! What did not reemerge with Bunting? This is where I shine my light.
I am not undermining anything that exists. I am a Belfast Harpist so obviously, I am a massive fan of The Belfast Harpers Assemble . Without Bunting's work, we would have lost the link to ancient music. The importance of Bunting's work in Irish harping is undeniable. I believe there is more to the story.
There is an expansion of the art form by including some of the lost aspects of bardic harping. I have been doing this for 30 years. My work as a Dangerous Harpist has been well documented. The time has come to give it context.
In march 2024. I presented my hypothesis on stage. The show sold out in record time and got a standing ovation. When I started researching this show, I did NOT expect to find answers.
Now I can tell you What got lost in Harping History in Ireland in the period between 1600 - 1792! My findings are culturally significant. I am chewing the top of the pencil to work out how to present the material. I am not qualified by degree but by three decades as an artist, creator, harpist and free thinker.
Every experience and avenue explored made me draw some correlations between what I was living in 2020 as The Dangerous Harpist and what the bardic harpers of old experienced when Queen Elizabeth First said Hang the Harpers and Burn their instruments........
that is a great place to start the story......
The next instalment will begin at the moment when Queen Elizabeth First decreed to HANG THE HARPERS AND BURN THEIR INSTRUMENTS ..................
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