Mariana, the latest release from Limerick singer-songwriter Emma Langford, is an uplifting, comforting song, taken from her forthcoming album Sowing Acorns due out this September.
“In the lyrics to Mariana, I tell someone I love just how much I admire and look up to her. I tell her that her kindness is witnessed more than she knows.,” said Emma.
“I tell her that I truly believe that when she doesn’t have the strength she needs to pull through on her own, that she does have the strength she needs to ask others for help.”
Speaking about how this song came to form, Emma said: “I wrote the words to Mariana in 2012, after five months living and working in Argentina. Its namesake was a friend and mentor I had met on my travels, but it was intended as a letter of sorts to a number of women who had touched and inspired me. I recorded it as a voice note, and then I put it away on the shelf.”
“The song eventually resurfaced in my memories; it had taken on new significance for me; I first played it in 2018 at a memorial event in my hometown of Limerick for Emma Mhic Mhathúna who was one of the women at the centre of the cervical check scandal.”
In 2019, Emma brought Mariana in its simplest form to the Grammy nominated duo Chris O’Brien and Graham Murphy in The Production Suite, Dublin, and they worked their magic, charting a euphoric string section played beautifully by Lucia MacPartlin, Maria Ryan, and Alec Brown.
As her forthcoming album Sowing Acorns was being pieced together, Emma made the decision each track would be a series of dedications, with a strong focus on the women in her life.
“Mariana is dedicated to the memory of Angeles Ito and LesleyAnne Liddane, two women who were dazzling streaks of colour in a grey world, who cared deeply about others, and who would have urged me to find the joy in everything, to push on, to keep going,” Emma said.
The song is available to buy/stream on Bandcamphttps://emmalangfordmusic.bandcamp.com/track/mariana-2and all profits from its sale will go to Safe Ireland‘s Covid Emergency Fund. Safe Ireland is a nationwide network of 38 local shelters and agencies.
