Annalisa Underhay is the only harpist in India and performs every night at The Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi. She spoke to Iknoor Kaur about her journey from being on the ship to performing in India
There are few people in India who know what the harp is, but fewer who have the liberty to play it. Thus, when harpist Annalisa Underhay played here for the first time, the only expressions she saw were of shock, awe and disbelief. Even though the instrument resembles the ancient veena that reflects Indian culture, Anna happens to be the only harpist in the country and performs at The Taj Mahal Hotel everyday. “Since my mother is a harpist, I was very fortunate to have two harps in my house. Otherwise it is very difficult to master the instrument because the instrument and teachers for it are rare. I just happened to fall into this because of my family and I’m glad I did,” she shared.
Anna started playing the harp professionally at the age of 16 and went onto performing on a cruise ship before she landed in India. She elaborated, “I’ve been all around the world. I’ve travelled more in 15 years than most people do in their entire lives. Plus on the ship I ended up working with people from 50 different nationalities. Coming to India was a little out of the blue. However, this offer from Taj came just about at the right time. I’m someone who loves to travel and India was the only country I hadn’t visited. In addition to that when I heard that there are no harpists in India, I came running.”
Apart from Anna’s expertise with the harp she is also fluent with five languages. She said, “English is my native language, I learnt French because I went to a French school while growing up instead of an English one, I learnt Italian when I was in University, Japanese came to me out of necessity when I went to work in Japan and at present I live in Hungary and am married to a Hungarian which made me pick up that language easily.”
She feels that being a musician, languages come easily to her. However, she still hasn’t managed to learn Hindi. “I don’t find languages difficult. I think music and languages go hand-in-hand since they use the same side of the brain to think. When I came to India I had 100 per cent contention to learn Hindi and in three months I do know conversational Hindi, but everyone around me speaks English. That is why I haven’t actually gone out and learnt the language,” she explained.
According to Anna, coming to India was like a dream come true. So when asked about what she loved about the county, she promptly said, “Everything. I’m lucky because when I was on the ship, 20-30 per cent of the employees were Indian. So I have a lot of Indian friends. Thanks to that, I knew a little about the culture and people. However, when I came here it was a wonderful surprise.” She added that Delhi gets a little busy for her. “I don’t think I was ready for such a busy schedule. But everyone is so nice that it’s been wonderful so far. I’m waiting for my parents to come to go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal,” she said.
Since Anna is going to spend another nine months in Delhi before heading back to the ship, she is looking forward to making some Bollywood and Indian music. “There is some Bollywood music I want to work on. I like it a lot. Even Indian music fascinates me,” she summed up.
