For many musicians, talking about the music itself is an understandably difficult process. They might tell you about their fascinating careers and regale you with weird and wonderful anecdotes, but the meaning and nature of the music itself is something that constantly eludes them. Martin Hayes from Maghera in County Clare is unique among musicians in that he has the language and the intellectual focus with which to address the more mysterious aspects of creativity. His starting point is to accept words like mystery, magic and muse as very real things.
Inspired by his father P.J., Martin took to the fiddle at the age of seven. He was to become a champion and an international performer whose disciplined musical journey was to lead him ever deeper into the music of his own place. His constant endeavour has been to leave himself open to what he unselfconsciously calls the muse, and to attempt to find what he refers to as The Lone- some Touch - the title of his last album and a reference to that certain sadness which is to be found in the music of Clare.
"A lot of older players kept talking to me about that sadness in the music, that draiocht, that touch. And I was encouraged in that direction. I didn't have enormous physical skill as a young player and so I tried to make simple things sound well and I tried to really get into the things that I could play. And while there is some magic in Clare of course, it's like anything else - why are Kerry footballers great footballers?
"The air really isn't any different there but they have a belief in it now. Clare people actually believe they have the music. They are very confident about it. They don't feel there is another source somewhere else that has a greater insight into it. So growing up in Clare you never second guessed it at all. You didn't doubt it for one minute but that you were actually right at the heart of it."
Martin's father P.J. was a founder member of the Tulla Ceili Band - one of the most famous ceili bands in the country. The immediate family also included Paddy Canny who was a national fiddle champion and the extended family was made up of the many musicians for whom the Hayes' home was a focus and meeting place. The young Martin was aware of the music from the moment he could hear and, importantly, began to pick up all he could, not from recordings, but from the primary source. It was a case of both nature and nurture.
"My father says that he taught me seven tunes and after that I was out on my own. He spent a short period teaching me direct things and after that he became a kind of mentor. To this day he still acts as a mentor and I ask him what he thinks. And I loved the music and the tunes before I had ever heard pop music or rock music. It was only in my late teenage years that I was ever actually able to comprehend the world of popular music, and I did it so that I could socially fit in. But I was completely immersed in traditional music and I loved it. In fact I was really confused at the time as to why everybody didn't get it. But then I was lucky. You have to be lucky enough to hit a few moments of Nirvana in the music - where there's a couple of occasions where it all clicks. You could sift through any amount of albums and radio shows and festivals and concerts and events and put up with all kinds of nonsense in order to get back there again."
The Lonesome Touch, Hayes' album with Dennis Cahill, was a successful one. It topped many polls and was recognised by people from all musical backgrounds as a thing of rare beauty. Much thought went into the preparation of the record and Hayes maintains there is hardly a note on it that he didn't have a plan for. That said, much of it was recorded in one take. It indicates quite clearly what Hayes is about. He knows what he is trying to achieve, he can articulate what he is trying to achieve - but he recognises that the desired realisation of the music is something outside his control. "I've found that performance is the place where my mind is most focussed. Being in that situation my single focus is to get into the music and I don't have an option to avoid going there. It's a bit of a challenge. I have to go through a lot of mental hoops in order to be in a good place to make the music happen. You have to make yourself worthy of the occasion. "It has to come through you and you have to be truly giving from inside.
It does feel like the power of music is something beyond your own knowledge. I don't remember putting together my musical ideas on an intellectual or a pre-meditated level. I feel like everything happened in little epiphanies and moments of inspiration and it's definitely attributable to something beyond myself. But it's like talking about electricity. I don't know what electricity is really but I can turn a light switch on and off. So while I don't really know what it is, I am becoming aware of the circumstances involved to allow it to happen or the mindset necessary in order for it to flow." THE music will not always "happen" and this is a frustrating experience for the musician even though an audience might still enjoy the music and the playing. When everything does come together however, Hayes describes the feeling as one of exhilaration. Concert-goers, fans and reviewers alike, inevitably use words like magical and spell-blinding and yet, according to Hayes, such words, in their actual sense, are quite appropriate. What Hayes is talking about is not some swirling mystical Ireland balcony - he is referring to what he sees as a genuinely spiritual element in the music.
"Things are happening that you didn't expect and things are flowing. You feel almost invincible and you can't believe that you ever thought it was otherwise. But soon enough you're right back looking at it from a distance again and wondering what was the peculiar set of circumstances, feelings and moods and perspectives that landed you right in that spot. I'm always trying to retrace my steps. All I know is that you to have clear up the mess that's in between the music and the muse. There is a clarity and openness required on a personal level to allow music to flow through you. But when you're caught up with doubts, with fears, with egotism - all of those issues cloud the music. If you can eliminate those by whatever means, be it spirituality, yoga or whatever, then it happens." Hayes now lives in Seattle and returns to Ireland for concerts and to teach along with his father at the Willie Clancy Summer school. His style, while still very much rooted in the tradition of County Clare, has since been touched by certain subtle sensibilities borrowed from other forms such as blues and jazz and he will talk easily of Miles Davis and Micho Russell in the same breath. Quite apart from the actual playing however, Hayes' ideas on how music works must be a revelation to any student who thinks it might just be a matter of learning the notes, long hours of practice and listening to Martin Hayes records.
"Rationality is something you wouldn't want to run amok. I spend very little time actually listening to music. I much prefer the world of fantasy where I'm remembering occasions of music and musicians. They get larger than life and the piece of music they played becomes more enormous in my imagination than it actually could have been. I prefer to keep it that way. I even imagine musicians that I haven't met. I never heard Paddy Fahy live and yet he's a fiddle player I would claim to be influenced by. I have a fantasy more than a reality of how something was played and I fill in the blanks myself. Another example is Joe Cooley's playing. Although I was never there to experience it, I've heard accounts of it and so I'm influenced by him in a very abstract kind of way. I try to emulate what I think he would have done. It's a way of projecting your own creative ideas outwards onto what other people might have done.
"So some of it is memory from past occasions and some of it is from musicians that I've not really heard. There might be two seconds, two minutes maybe, in their playing that shows off this incredible magic and Iblot out all the other times when there was no magic. And so I imagine everything they play as being imbued with an extra sense of this magic or perhaps more than was ever really there." Hayes is aware that being held in high regard can be a dangerous thing. He is entirely devoted to the music and believes that it cannot happen if anything comes between himself and the muse. The music, he believes, must be played for its own sake and the constant push to achieve something quite elusive must be pursued in a totally selfless way. There are many distractions but again he finds his inspiration in Clare.
"Micho Russell was a tin whistle player from west Clare. He had a natural innocence about him and a lack of ego and he had an innate understanding of the music - all of which allowed it to happen. He didn't need to know anything else and he was over 70 years of age before he was discovered at all. He had lived a life in absolute certainty that there was neither notoriety or fame anywhere in store for him and he had been playing his music from a very humble space all along. I saw that with a lot of players.
"I also saw that once you got kind of good, things got complicated. Being a professional musician did sometimes complicate it. There is also always an expectation that you would develop out into wider fields and that there is to be some kind of flowering outwards. But I'm still on a journey inwards and what I hit upon occasionally I would like to make more consistent. I do feel anybody can play music to tell you the truth. I think it's a matter of exposure and opportunity. It is a gift but it's the gift of loving it."