Eleanor McEvoy is on the cusp of something new. Andrew Hamilton stumbles upon the hidden verses of this woman’s heart.
Set in the centre of the East African Plateau, Uganda rises like a great wild plain from the rocky shores of Lake Victoria. A troubled land - beset by political corruption, war with its neighbours and hunger - Uganda remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet for Eleanor McEvoy, it is also a land of hope. After visiting the country with Oxfam last year, McEvoy was moved by the happiness of spirit of the people she met. It moved her and, like all emotional moments, it helped shape and form the direction of her music to come. “My aim when I went out there was to do something for charity, to do a good deed. I wasn’t going out there to enjoy it but when I went there I was amazed by the beauty of the country and the warmth of the people. When I thought of Uganda, in my ignorance, I didn’t think of a very beautiful country but it was. That said, it was very harrowing, without a doubt - seeing the conditions that a lot of these people were living in and hearing about the atrocities that they had experienced. But in a funny way it was also very up lifting. I was looking at this extraordinary power of hope and this sense of community that they all had. It was a weirdly mixed experience. I think experiences like that can’t but feed into how you do your job as an artist. As long as I can remember, and I started writing songs when I was five or six, it’s always been the case. When something dramatic happens in my life, it comes out in my songs. But that’s not always a good thing and sometimes it can be quite frustrating," she said.
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