Nadine Mhanna

Where is the harp really from? Most people answer Greece, or somewhere vaguely European. The instrument's story runs back thousands of years, and some of the earliest depictions are found in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Nadine Mhanna has spent a good part of her career explaining this, and this episode is about why the correction matters.

We talk first about the instrument: its size, its impracticality, its expense, the physical relationship a harpist develops with an object that cannot be carried casually anywhere. Then about the decision. Choosing the harp in Lebanon is not choosing a career path with a template. There is no obvious sequence of teachers, orchestras and opportunities waiting; she had to assemble one.

The conversation opens into identity. Nadine talks about being read as European by association, about the assumption that classical music belongs elsewhere, and about the quiet reclamation involved in placing the instrument's origins back in this part of the world. It is not defensiveness. It is accuracy, and accuracy turns out to be part of belonging.

We also talk about passion, and she is refreshingly unsentimental. The love of the instrument does not remove the hours, the isolation of solo practice, or the economics of being a specialist in a small market.

Sometimes what we think we know is only part of the story. That applies to the harp, and to most of what we assume about where things and people come from.