First recording as sun riah and now under her own name, Oklahoma harpist Moriah Bailey has long challenged the conventions and assumptions around the instrument. The use of loops and layering to introduce new dimensions to a traditionally delicate sound, and the willingness to push into experimental and dissonant territories to leave behind whatever stereotypes might linger. Questions around femininity were inherent within this process. If the pure, angelic tones of classic harp music are the sonic simulacrum of quote-unquote womanhood, then the songs of Moriah Bailey intended to paint a more faithful picture. Harp music as femininity, only this time with all its multiplicities and contradictions left intact.
Though most recent record, 2017’s Sitting with Sounds and Listening for Ghosts, stepped back from some of the more experimental aspects of its predecessors, this interrogation of womanhood continued in its lyrics. Songs spare and vulnerable yet shot through with a certain steeliness. A sense of perseverance in the face of tension and loss that might not be love as we are usually shown it, but is love all the same.
This month sees Moriah Bailey return with a brand new single, ‘So You Say…’. Released on Keeled Scales, the track again utilises the harp to explore the strange relationship between lightness and weight, though also represents Bailey’s fullest arrangements to date. Sarah Reid (violin), Ryan Robinson (percussion) and Ricky Tutaan (guitar) all join to lend their talents, elevating the sound beyond the harp and vocals, and thus expanding the world of Bailey’s music.
But at its heart lies the same willingness to probe below the surface, to view the difficult truth of things. “‘So You Say’ emerged from a place of speaking and not being heard but also deeply struggling with mental health,” Bailey explains. “The song sounds bright in ways but holds a heaviness. It sits with the weight of being diminished, struggling to find a way out of a particular mindset, and losing a sense of self in someone else’s perceptions, wants and ideas.”
‘So You Say…’ is out now via Keeled Scales and is available from the Moriah Bailey Bandcamp page.