Not many people have a fiddle-playing grandfather in a band called The Senile Delinquents. Not many people have a harp-playing mother who independently pressed up and released 1,000 vinyl copies of an album that set Yeats's poetry to music. And, most impressively, not many people can say they ran off to join a circus at the age of 14 - and mean it.
Belfast-born singer/songwriter/harpist/pianist/stiltwalker Ursula Burns did just that. Stubbornly weary of helping her mother to look after newborn twins, recalcitrant teenager Ursula joined a community circus and, although not officially a runaway, was outside the domestic nest for a few evenings a week and at weekends, "staying overnight in rusty 'ould buildings and falling-down tents".
Her mode of transport at the circus and in the ring was stilts and, in between going to college and resisting the pressure to play a harp her mother had bought some years back, she remained on those spindly stilts until her legs got tired. During her summer breaks from college, Ursula would pack up her stilts, shove a tin whistle into her back pocket and head off to Europe to engage in bouts of time-honoured busking. She liked Amsterdam best, but in Paris found a network of buskers skilled in the equally time-honoured business of sabotage.
At the close of her college days, Ursula decided to join Horse & Bamboo in Lancashire, a self-sufficient, humanistic theatre company that communicated only through musical instruments, official and found. Once she recovered from the initial shock of camping, she loved the lifestyle. "It was kind of like a gypsy life," she recalls. "They walk from village to village, setting up in community centres, school halls and the like." Ursula stayed with them for three years, living outdoors in pitched-up tents and other less-than-solid structures. A tad chilly? "You get really tough and quite seasoned," she says. "It was the best part of my life."
She left the company in her mid-20s because she began to feel inexplicably drawn to returning to Belfast. "The last year was quite unsettled for me, really unhappy. I knew that something was urging me to come home. I didn't think of myself as a musician, but over the three years with the company, I knew that music had awakened within me. I was never that focused or clear on what it was, and it didn't come to me in a flash, either. But I decided to go for it, and pack in the job. I'd been away from Belfast for about five years, and the cease-fire had kicked in. So I arrived home and, of course, you're there for a few months and you end up asking yourself why you returned!"
Brimming with lack of confidence, Ursula auditioned for various theatre-based jobs, but flunked them all. On the dole and now living in a small flat, there was something twinkling amidst the pots, pans and piles of books that nagged at her: the harp, which had travelled from the family house. Quickly mastering the instrument, Ursula began to write songs for what turned out to be her debut album, According To Ursula Burns. It might not have shaken the world to its foundations, but the album was beyond a curio, and introduced a quirky talent. More Jane Siberry than Mary O'Hara, Burns's predilection for the abstract world-view was enough to merit something greater than faint praise. Following the usual initial burst of publicity, however, nothing was heard of the singer until the release a couple of weeks ago of her new album, Spell.
It is another minor triumph in a world of major releases, a throwback to the defining spirit of independence and a record that Ursula herself completely financed through hard work on the fashion shows/funerals/dinners/lunches/ weddings circuit. Working in such an environment could be construed as shaking hands with the devil, but Ursula would take the money with one hand and put it into the making of Spell with the other. She is acutely aware of the way in which such financial necessity can be viewed, and is quick to defend her right as a musician and an artist to engage in what is effectively corporate sponsorship.
"Some people might call it wallpaper music," she allows. "I used to think that kind of work was the pits, and I'd view my own gigs as the ultimate. But after years of trailing round bars and venues of all standards I realised that they're actually quite good things to do. What do I play? Well, I've never been trained and I don't read music, so I just play anything - standards, folk music, music I make up, the odd classical piece and lots of other stuff people would recognise. All that hasn't just helped to make this record, but has actually, absolutely made it."
In between playing rippling background music for people nibbling hors-d'oeuvres, Ursula decamped to a farmhouse close to Portaferry, Co Down. In the truebut-strange townland name of Ballyweird (Ordnance Survey Map Researchers of Ireland, I salute you) Ursula snuggled in to make Spell. "I knew it was brewing on the piano," she says. "I needed a break from the harp. I wanted to do an album with an atmosphere, to create the record while I was locked in a completely other world."
And so it proved - at least according to Ursula. With production duties handled by Kieran Kennedy (who is largely responsible for fashioning the album's overall dapper sonic cohesiveness), she maintains that the farmhouse was haunted. "At the beginning I was terrified. I was sharing the house with a fellow musician, and I was mostly down there by myself. But I certainly felt as if I got quite acquainted with the ghost. It took me a while to adapt to that scenario, but I got a buzz from it as well. I left the place last October, and got out of there before the winter and the foot-and-mouth crisis, but not before I said goodbye to the ghost."
Honest in an Idon't-care-whatthey-think way, Ursula Burns comes across as a fringe artist whose creativity requires managerial and record-company harnessing if it is to gain its deserved rewards. The impression one receives, however, is that she is doing just fine in the non-corporate world. She has her music, her gigs and her posh dinner parties' slush fund. As for a career - what career?
"It doesn't seem like a career to me," she says, gently dismissing the idea. "I tend to run away from something like that. Sometimes I just don't feel connected with the real world, or able to deal with that side of things. So I just tend to do what I do." Then, amusingly, she starts to chide herself: "If you just do your music in your bedroom and stick it in the bottom drawer, though, that's not very practical, is it? You've got to get it out.
"In some ways, it's also a very selfish thing, the way you have to view yourself as a product, promoting it. To do something like that, though, I had to pay for it myself through playing harp gigs. I suppose I could have been more in the career mode, like chasing a record deal or looking for sponsorship or funding. But I can't think in that way, can't operate or cross into that world. Anyway, not to worry - I've managed to keep my Lada going!"
Spell is currently on release
