I'm on a bit of a personal journey and that's not a bad thing at all.

Have you seen Emma Langford yet? Have you come to The Duncairn and caught the clear water voice and the banter? Have you not been drawn into the stories that unfold on the stage? The words and the melodies keenly observed. A picture, a sense, an electricity that connects with the music, with the night that’s in it. That is Emma’s strength, bringing it to words before you even knew you felt it. Creating the characters you’ve never met, but somehow ache for. Drawing the melancholy out from under you with a one liner, steering you to another song, another story, a different coloured sky.

Take The Winding Way Down to Kells Bay for example. The tradition, and the quirk, and the heart that bounce the full length of that song. Dedicated to her grand-uncle Eamon Langford, Emma has performed it live at The Duncairn and her audience shifted imperceptibly into a timeless state. No shuffling in chairs, no whispers, no rattles, or ringing of glasses. They were in the warm hug of the water like Grand-Uncle Eamon, in the sad shocked twilight of loss with Emma. But she stopped that there, shifted the sad to grateful, the loss to love. She recently went on to sing the song in Episode 3 of The Duncairn’s Virtual Cabaret. No stage, no audience, no visibly collective acknowledgment of Eamon Langford in the room. Instead, his spark ignited in every household that watched the Cabaret that night. “It's always a strange experience sharing my songs with an audience,” Emma explains. “Expecting a room made up of close friends and complete strangers to have any kind of emotional connection with my unique, personal stories is so, so alien. When people do connect with them it's beautiful and bizarre. Recording it at home on my own actually in a way feels a lot more natural to me - I'm literally inviting people into my life, my world, and that's what I always try to do on the stage, so doing it through a camera from my bedroom feels like the most normal thing in the world... But when no applause or response comes after it, that's a bit strange.”

But it’s all a bit strange at the minute, isn’t it? A fast-moving emergency that has slowed everything down to a stand-still. Meantime, Emma keeps searching for the light shining through the cracks. “I'm feeling okay. A little sad - everyone is grieving something right now, whether it's a loss of a friend or a loved one, or just normality, so I'm going gently. I've not really given myself much time in the last few years to really sit with my thoughts and feelings around things, to just play music for fun, so I'm doing a lot of that. I'm on a bit of a personal journey and that's not a bad thing at all. I'm also connecting now with more of my fellow musicians than I ever did before, we're all feeling quite united by the situation, so that's kind of beautiful. I'm not writing anything new at the moment, but that may change, I feel something brewing so we'll see. No pressure.”

All profits from the sales of Emma Langford’s single Mariana will go to Safe Ireland, supporting people sheltering from domestic violence. Buy the single on Bandcamp: emmalangfordmusic.bandcamp.com/

The Covid crisis has had another, very different impact on Belfast city as well. Emma had: “intended to actually move up to Belfast and get to know the place a little better before the shit really hit the fan in March. I feel like I have a big long-distance crush on the place. I don't think I ever had a specific picture of the place, or how it would feel in my head, so falling so hard for it was a total rush - the people are dry-witted and warm, I've only ever had good food and good coffee in Belfast, I've spent a lot of time wine-tipsy and talking shite, and every gig I've played there has had this electricity, this buzz of positivity. So that's Belfast for me. What's not to love?”

Tune in to Emma Langford’s Formal Friday Virtual Sing-Song on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as she and her guests play some of your favourite songs to sing along with, and introduce you to some new gems too.

Her crush on Belfast does have some connection with an old church building on Duncairn Avenue though. ”I love the community the Duncairn gathers around it; the creative community, the business community. Visiting the place to play a show always feels to me like a big group hug. When Ray asked me to contribute to the Cabaret I knew I'd get that same feeling. It's a feeling of connection I don't get everywhere I go, and it's really really special. Everyone is working equally hard to create something magical.”

“I loved my first show there, the 50 Night, sharing a stage with Ian Lynch from Lankum and poet Stephen Murphy. We came up with this impromptu collaboration to wrap up the show; Stephen read a piece about a goddess from his book The Sea Hound and I sang the Goddess' parts in it, and Ian played some gorgeous drone-y stuff on the shruti box under all of that, and none of us knew what we were doing or what would happen next but we rode the wave and had a brilliant time spoofing through it and the place went wild - I wonder was it recorded? I'd love to watch it back, I'll probably cringe. That was my first taste of the kind of collective energy that makes the Duncairn such a gem in Ireland's crown, a moment I'll always remember because I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be. There's a photo by Stan [Nikolov, The Duncairn’s resident photographer] on the wall in the community hall downstairs, of the three of us on stage splitting our sides laughing during that collaboration, and it means so much that it's crystalised in the centre's memory just like it is in mine."

The last Duncairn Virtual Cabaret for this series will take place on Saturday 16th May with the support of sponsors NIAVAC. You can tune in from 8.30pm on Facebook and YouTube.

Much thanks for the astounding Images by Stanislav Nikolov