Irish Harps, "The Odyssey", and Selling Balloons:
A Glimpse Into the Life of an Ave Musician
Photo: Emily Anne Blanchard playing her Irish harp.
“I’ve never met anyone like her before.”
This is one of the many comments I receive as I go around asking about a particular sophomore student at Ave Maria University.
She sings, plays the piano, the flute, can “get songs out of” a guitar, and perhaps, most impressively, excels in the Irish Harp.
This student is Emily Anne Blanchard.
As I sit down to interview Emily Anne, she situates herself comfortably on the rock wall where we are located, on the grass outside the Canizaro Library at Ave Maria University in Florida. Before we get started, she takes pretzels and a packet of white cheddar cheese out of her famed flamingo-patterned backpack as I begin to ask her questions.
Emily Anne tells me that she is a music major, with a double focus in music composition and voice, and a minor in communications. After a moment’s pause, she jokingly suggests “You should go and say I’m ‘studying life! I like to study people that’s why I came here’”.
Going along with the joke, I ask her about any ulterior motives coming to study at Ave. “No one knows about them [the ulterior motives], really, I’m here as an inspector...I’m actually working for the FBI,” she replies, laughing wholeheartedly.
“When I think of Emily Anne, she’s professional yet she’s like really relaxed. I feel like she’s very...exotic. She’s a very unique person, I’ve never met anyone like her before.”
I proceed to ask Emily Anne about any plans she may have for after Ave. “Are you asking realistically or dream-wise?” she responds immediately.
Intrigued, I answer, “Both. Either.”
She chooses to answer with her dreams first telling me, “So, I have a couple of dreams...” She tells me that she would love to “take composition seriously” by composing “soundtracks for movies like Hans Zimmer, or something like that...” She then reveals to me that her second dream would be to teach Irish harp.
“Emily Anne is incredibly hardworking, very musically talented, and ridiculous. Emily Anne has a lot of flair if that makes sense because she is a musician.”
Following the analogy of Irish culture being told through the harp to ancient Greek culture, Emily Anne goes further, “So, if you think of The Odyssey, that was spoken to a rhythm whereas in Ireland if they had a story or like an epic...like The Odyssey, it would be told with a harp, and it wouldn’t be written down it’d be passed on and the music--each player would change to their own style, so they would help get the listener’s emotions involved and engaged.”
The picture of historic Irish culture Emily Anne manages to paint in her words fascinates me. She leans forward slightly, getting lost in the fascination of Irish history. A big smile and a dreamy look envelop Emily Anne’s face as she continues to explain the history of the Irish harp, gesturing enthusiastically.
Emily Anne further develops this picture of Irish history for me as she continues telling me that harpists were actually persecuted by the English before Ireland’s independence, as they were the ones passing down the culture.
She continues earnestly, “And so, I think it's really cool because there are songs that I play that haven't been written out, and the only reason why I know them is because they’ve been passed on from someone else who knew them. So, unless I give it to someone else, some people may never know what these songs are cause they’re not written. So, I really like...I love the style, I like the sound, but I also love the whole background.”
“She’s a very intense person, and I love her.”
Emily Anne continues to tell me her possible plans for school after Ave, “I kinda want to go to grad school for vocal performance, that’s more of a dream, cause I don’t think I can get there, it’s really competitive. Um...realistically, I wanna go and get a graduate degree in...maybe just music education or something like that, and I’d love to teach at a college, I’d love to teach music theory or voice lessons, piano, harp. So, that’s the more realistic, that I’m gonna go to higher education and be a teacher.”
Moving on, I begin to ask her further about the different kinds of instruments she plays. Emily Anne interjects with “Can I actually mention that one of my dream jobs is to sell balloons?!”, she says laughing. “...just kidding...”, she continues, “Well, I have a lot of dream jobs. Honestly, I’d love to go to the moon, and also, I’d love to be like an airplane pilot for the Air Force...Actually, I just have a lot of dream jobs. Anything weird and cool and kind of out of the ordinary, I would love to do. Also, the forgotten jobs, like I would...maybe I should just be a cricket and be someone’s conscience...anyways...did you ask how many instruments I played?”
“Emily Anne Blanchard is a fun-loving person who brought me out of my shell my freshman year.”
Whether Emily Anne ends up selling balloons or teaching the Irish harp, it's clear that her influence will be as impactful and inspiring as it is at Ave Maria.
Until then, I expect we will see her around campus—maybe where the forgotten jobs are...or maybe on the moon.
I’m on the edge of my seat—or edge of the rock wall—as Emily Anne begins explaining to me, first her reasons for starting to play the Irish harp, and then the history of the harp itself in Irish culture.
She first explains that she started playing the Irish harp due to their smaller size, since classical “harps are huge”, one must be careful to avoid injury. “Also, they’re really expensive,” she continues, “So, I got the Irish harp because I knew that there was a less likely chance that I would get hurt...even though then I went and got tendonitis so that worked”, she gestures to the gray brace around her wrist with a small laugh.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing points of this interview follows as Emily Anne began to explain how the Irish harp, historically, was used to pass on stories in Irish culture.
She begins explaining how this historical background is one of the many reasons she adores to play the instrument. She gushes, “...I love the tradition in it. So, all of the Irish culture and tradition was passed on through music, so, if you think Ireland—all their stories were told by a harpist, so he was the storyteller, so, think of a bard.”
Photo: Emily Anne Blanchard