I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

I can bear a lot but not that pall

Families of privilege and money would have harps in their parlors, and their cultured daughters would learn to play. It's got such a strange history. But that wasn't the context that I learned it in, so the inherent friction between that history and the more humanist folk-y history wasn't in my conscience at all.

People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.

The so-called positive press has in some ways been more difficult to swallow than the negative.

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.