Ríona Sally Hartman
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The Selfish Sister

17/7/2016

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Hello Lisbon! I'm here to go on a little musical adventure and do a week long songwriting workshop with Tillery in the Centro Cultural de Belém. Tillery is the collective noun for a gaggle of songwriters (namely Becca Stevens, Gretchen Parlato and Rebecca Martin) and if you haven't heard of them well have a listen to this little chunk of beauty right here:  
So there I am last night in my room after a long day of being a tourist (the workshop doesn't start till tomorrow morning so plenty of time for sightseeing!) and I kept getting interrupted by cockroaches. Now listen here, I know cockroaches aren't that big a deal, that they're a fact of life in lots of warm countries but I don't care...we don't have them in Ireland and as far as I'm concerned they're the grossest thing on the planet! So I decided to get out of there and go sing a new song I've written in the warm night air. 
I haven't got any high tech equipment with me so it's filmed on my phone, just out of shot is my little thumb piano. I'm growing to love that thumb piano, I tried replacing it with a shinier, fancier model but I didn't like any in the shop so I guess we're stuck with each other for now. I stayed there for a long while singing and I only got interrupted once by a police man who I was sure was gonna kick me out but instead asked if I was ok and wanted to know what my instrument was. Lovely! The song's called The Selfish Sister and I've written out the lyrics at the end of this post. 

To the right is what Mosteiro dos Jeronimos looks like during the day although this was a rare quiet moment, there's usually hundreds of people queueing outside!
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Anyone want to recommend places I should check out while I'm here? On my list so far is Hot Club and Fábrica Braco de Prata. I'm open to suggestions! Answers on a postcard...or on Facebook, twitter, instagram or the comments below. 

The Selfish Sister

Click clack throw your head back when you laugh
Tiny teeth white secrets in your mouth
Yours to keep like sweets you'll suck them dry
Dreams like secrets shatter in the light.

Tic tac little toes on little feet
Snip snap lacey fingers tracing me
Truth, a toy it's just beyond your grasp
Fumbled, crumpled chins and grazed palms.

Fairytales, make believe, stories on a shelf
Our fantasies I made them real and stole them while you slept.
*Treasure, magic, love and blame I kept them for myself
Guilt like breadcrumbs left a trail
You found me.
You found me.
You found me.
You found me. 

You'l grow up and I won't hold your hand
You won't struggle with those demons I have
Skip, trip lightly, don't step on the cracks
Eyes wide open brilliant as a lamp.
You found me.
You found me.
You found me.
You found me. 


*I flubbed this lyric a little in the video, a freudian slip I think because I'm not completely sold on it. I'll probably change it down the line. 
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West Pier Song Cycle Update - FÓD

12/5/2016

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FÓD

I had been saying for a while that I would come up with a better name for The West Pier Song Cycle and at last I have!
You might know from my previous blog posts (or if you follow me on twitter, Facebook, instagram…etc.) that I’m currently composing two song cycles; The West pier Song Cycle and The Telepathic Two Song Cycle. The west pier one accompanies a walk along the west pier in Dun Laoghaire (well I’d call it Monkstown but I think on google maps they call it Dun Laoghaire and who am I to argue with our google overlord!) and the Telepathic Two one follows the story of the telepathic mother and son taking a trip on the DART. Well I’ve decided to name the project FÓD.
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FÓD is an Irish word that means sod, layer of soil or a strip of grass along a road. Depending on it's context it can mean a place or a spot of land. I had a few reasons for choosing the name not least amongst them it’s a really satisfying sounding word! Everyone has words they love and words they irrationally hate. My favourites are ‘bloom’ and ‘béim’*.

There’s an old Irish tradition of taking a lit sod of turf, ‘fód móna’, from the hearth of your family home when you leave to light the fire in your new home. Obviously this tradition made much more sense in small rural villages where your family home would be a literal stone's throw from your new home! There's a few lovely Irish traditions to do with home building like the one where you'd invite all your neighbours over to dance in your new home to stamp down the earth to create a solid rammed earth floor. 
 
I visited a lovely little museum in Donegal called Gelncolmcille Folk Village and the tour guide was a young guy who happened to be heading to Dublin to start studying songwriting in BIMM the following month, anyway he had great anecdotes about traditional home building in Ireland. I'm pretty sure the tourists visiting from abroad couldn't understand a word of his accent but I enjoyed it. 
So to me the word fód is this beautiful symbol of leaving home, the road to your new home, new beginnings...it ties together so much of what I want this music to say. 

On a side note I think this tradition might be where the idea for those awful tacky souvenirs that they used to sell in the airport come from. You know the ones of tiny ceramic cottages with tiny pieces of turf in them. They definitely weren’t made in Ireland and that ‘turf’ never came from anyone’s family home! My FÓD will hopefully be a more genuine and heartfelt interpretation of the tradition!



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*that second one is an Irish word pronounced bame. To put béím on something means to to emphasise it which just sounds exactly like what it means!
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The Telepathic Two Song Cycle

29/1/2016

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I got some good news today that I'm very excited about! I've been awarded an Arts Professional Development grant from Dún Loaghaire Rathdown County Council Arts Office to finish composing the Telepathic Two Song Cycle!

Off to a studio in Bray this morning, the most glorious commute on the planet #dart #dublin #commute #wicklow #sea #sky

A video posted by Riona Sally Hartman (@rionasally) on Dec 10, 2015 at 1:30am PST


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The West Pier Song Cycle

15/11/2015

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You might have seen on my Facebook page or Instagram that I've been awarded an Emerging Artist Bursary for the creation and development of new work by Dún Laighaire - Rathdown County Council and I couldn't be more excited! Over the next six months I'll be composing a song cycle to accompany, and inspired by, the experience of walking the west pier Dún Laoghaire, Dublin. 
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SomethiNg Old Something New

10/10/2015

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Something New: ERA by Umiuma 

I came across this song by Japanese band Uimiuma about a year ago and ever since I find myself craving it from time to time. Whenever I'm feeling pissed off it makes me feel better. The cocky guitar riff, the fresh-green-leaves-in-springtime vocals, the optimistic snare marching along on the verse...it all adds up to just under a minute and a half of mood enhancing, confidence boosting good times. The lyrics sound like maybe they're about someone being defiant while simultaneously nonchalant but I actually have no idea, which is a bit of a blessing because it means I can pretend she's singing about whatever will make me happiest at that very moment. 

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Something Old Something New

1/10/2015

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Something New: Stick Stock by Emily Portman Trio

Last summer I got to see the Emily Portman Trio upstairs in Odessa and they were excellent live. Perfect harmonies, accents to die for and banter between tunes about Harry Potter...what more could you ask for? A lot of their songs were murder ballads (my favourite!) and this one was particularly good and bloody. 

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    Ríona Sally Hartman

    A blog about all sorts of things like music, books, storytelling and paper art. From time to time I'll interview a fellow musician or review a gig. 

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