‘It was surreal,’ says woman who played her harp atop Mount Kilimanjaro

What does a harp sound like when it’s being strummed atop a dormant volcano, at an altitude of 5,895 metres?

“It sounds like heaven,” Irish harpist Siobhan Brady said.

Brady has just performed a concert at the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the highest single free-standing mountain above sea level in the world.

In doing so, she beat her own Guinness World Record for highest harp performance.

“It was surreal,” Brady told As It Happens guest host Robyn Bresnahan. “We had beautiful weather and we weren’t expecting it.”

“So I had on a down jacket and mittens and everything, and I got to completely take it off in the sun and admire the glaciers and the clouds underneath — and it was just beautiful.” 

Her original record — for playing at 4,954 metres at Singla Pass, India, in 2018 — still stands until Guinness confirms her latest attempt, a process the record-keeping company says could take between 12 to 15 weeks. 

Brady says she got into the business of record breaking when a man named Desmond Gentle invited her to attempt the world’s highest harp contest in the Himalayas in 2018.

Gentle, who ran a beloved used piano shop in Camden, England, organized the high-altitude concert to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis Ireland.

“When we were coming down, he said that we could do it again, but bigger and better and raise more money,” Brady said. “And so he decided that Kilimanjaro would be like the perfect challenge.”

However, a little over a week after his return to London from India, Gentle died. Brady and her team decided to pursue his Kilimanjaro dream in his honour. 

A team effort

The whole endeavour was years in the making, Brady said, and involved a crew of people from both Ireland and Tanzania to co-ordinate the complex logistics.

“We had two years of a monthly hike where we would bring the harp up various mountains across Ireland. We experimented with lots and lots of different harp carrying techniques, and once we found the correct one, we were planning on bringing the harp up Kilimanjaro,” she said.

But when they connected with their team of guides in Tanzania, they were advised against carrying it themselves as they were unfamiliar with the dormant volcano’s tricky terrain.

“So we got ourselves up the mountain … and then our amazing team in Africa, with the porters and the guides, got the harp up to the summit,” she said. 

Once there, Brady performed an 18-minute concert, per Guinness’ oddly specific criteria. 

The performance included a medley of Irish music, new and old, and a Swahili song called Thank You Tanzania. She also performed Ed Sheeran’s Little Bird, a song that’s held significance in the cystic fibrosis community since the British pop star famously performed it for an Irish teenager with cystic fibrosis shortly before she died in 2017.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease, for which there is no cure, that affects the digestive system and the lungs. While it varies from person to person, some of its most common symptoms are persistent cough, thick mucus, wheezing and shortness of breath, according to Cystic Fibrosis Canada. 

Caroline Heffernan, 53, who has cystic fibrosis, was part of the climbing team, and trained for months to prepare for the climb and the high altitude. 

Before the record attempt, Heffernan told the PA news agency that she would be bringing with her a bandana with the lyrics to Little Bird.

“For me, that’s a way of bringing all of my friends with me,” she said.

Philip Watt, CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Ireland, congratulated Heffernan and the rest of the Highest Harp Concert team.

“We are very respectful of the fact that Kilimanjaro is not only the highest mountain in Africa but is also a sacred mountain for many in Tanzania and we pay tribute to the many who assisted the team in reaching the summit,” Watt said in a press release.

Brady says the Kilimanjaro climb — and the subsequent performance — all went splendidly, though she “personally did not like coming down.”

“You basically ski down because the rocks kind of fall underneath your feet, which I did not enjoy,” she said. 

But when it was all over, she rewarded herself with a much-needed shower. 

“It might have been the best shower I’ve ever had,” she said.