South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Stringfluencers make harp hip
Instrument long associated with angels and virtue plucks its way across musical genres and social media
“I am not the quintessential image of a harpist,” said Brandee Younger, 37, a classically trained harpist, composer and educator. Younger, who lives in Harlem, smiled audibly as she enumerated the common stereotypes of the stringed instrument. “You’re blond, your eyes are blue … little naked baby angels,” she said, joking. “It’s just so not down to earth.”
Bringing the harp to the masses has been a central goal of Younger’s career. Her jazz-infused compositions have been featured on works by pop and R&B’s most recognizable names including Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, John Legend and Lauryn Hill.
For centuries the harp has been lodged in the domain of “serious” music — a niche instrument, perhaps dusted off for weddings and brunches. With such an entrenched reputation, could the harp ever be hip?
It’s not without precedent. Lizzo gave the flute a boost back in 2018. Videos of the singer twerking while flawlessly tooting rap melodies quickly went viral, challenging stereotypical connotations of the flute as an instrument of purity and innocence.
Thanks to a collection of emerging independent artists and social media musicians, the harp is also finding a new audience. And the instrument is turning up in some unexpected places, including PornHub movie soundtracks and heavily engaged TikTok posts.
Younger’s love affair with the instrument began when she was a girl growing up in the suburban enclave of Hempstead, New York, and heard a father’s colleague play; she started lessons as a teenager. “The harp is one of the few instruments that creates sound with direct touch,” she said. “There’s no barrier between you and the sound.”
But as her musical career progressed, instead of solemnly plucking chamber music by Claude Debussy or Carlos Salzedo, Younger wanted to play the soulful music of her idols Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, two Black female jazz harpists she has called the “lodestars” of her career.
“Not only are they playing this music that is just killing, but I want to play this stuff because it’s so cool,” Younger said. “They were women. They were Black. I was just connected to them on so many different levels.”
The harp is one of the oldest known instruments, and was widely played in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. Later it became popular among the royal and
aristocratic classes of Europe — Marie Antoinette regularly entertained guests at the French Court with her ornate gilded harp — and became a fixture in Victorian-era salons. Exhibiting proficiency in musical instruments like the harp was one way for women to prove they were worthy marriage material.
The association of the harp with chastity and virtue has dogged modern players. Joanna Newsom, the indie singer-songwriter who catapulted the harp onto Billboard music charts with her 2006 album, “Ys,” has fought the stereotype of its music being all fairy tales and unicorns.
“It’s an infantilizing thing that happens,” Newsom told the British press upon the release of her 2015 album, “Divers.” “The language is minimizing and narrowing of possible narrative depth.”
Marilu Donovan, 33, a harpist in New York, is also over the instrument’s prudish rep. “It just becomes exhausting,” she said. “It’s an instrument. It’s multifaceted. It can have so many different feels to it and still be beautiful.”
Donovan performs with Adam Markiewicz, a violinist and vocalist, under the name LEYA. The duo brings a punk mentality to their experimental work, which has been described by Pitchfork as “eerie, beckoning and tinged with horror.” Donovan achieves this effect through unorthodox tunings and amplifications. LEYA also collaborates with their peers in the experimental music scene.
Mary Lattimore, another contemporary harpist, collaborates with musicians from other genres too — including prominent indie rockers like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and the Violators’ Steve Gunn and Kurt Vile.
The harp’s delicate curves have also found a wider audience on social media. Hannah Stater, a music student at the University of Michigan formerly known as @han nah_harpist on TikTok (she now uses her full name), has accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of likes on the platform.
Kristan Toczko, a Canadian harpist, was praised by the gaming community after Reddit went wild for her rendition of the Halo video game’s theme song.
When Madison Calley, who is in her 20s, started posting videos of her own harp performances to her social media profiles, she didn’t expect to have even a fraction of that success.
Calley, who lives in Los Angeles, had completed a recording session for Ariana Grande’s “Positions” album. Then came the coronavirus and canceled concerts. Calley turned to Instagram to keep her skills sharp.
A typical video shows Calley playing pop and R&B on a towering Champagne-hued pedal harp in her spacious living room, dotted with various greenery and flooded with natural light. One of her earliest clips, a cover of Alicia Keys’ song “Diary,” was noticed by Keys, who reposted Calley’s rendition to her millions of followers.
“I think once the pandemic hit everyone was on their phones looking for some escapism from all the craziness going on in the world,” Calley said. “I had no idea it would take off the way it has.”
Soon, producers from the Latin Grammys were calling with an offer to play in the 2020 awards show. Calley shimmered in a glittering gold evening gown as she initiated the orchestral opening for the Colombian singer-songwriter Karol G’s performance of “Tusa,” which was nominated for song of the year.
Calley also appeared onstage for the rapper Roddy Ricch’s musical performance of “Heartless” during the recent Grammy Awards. “A lot of interesting and amazing opportunities have come from social media,” Calley said.
Calley has also taken on a small group of students — all women of color — hoping to instill enthusiasm for the harp.