Martin Hayes, the good ancestor.

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A review of Shared Notes: A musical journey by Martin Hayes

Martin Hayes has written a memoir that’s every bit as brilliant, engaging and moving as one of his famous extended performance sets. The Irish fiddle player was forced onto the sidelines by the Covid epidemic in 2020 but that gave him the time and space to complete the book. In his music, he’s a master of time and space and those skills transfer to the flow, structure, and measured pace of the narrative. It’s a substantial and welcome addition to the meager store of good books on Irish music. The photograph shows a selection from my own modest collection with Hayes’ book in pride of place.

His story starts in the heart of a hotbed of traditional music in East Clare. He grew up immersed in that culture working on the family farm, walking to and from school, and absorbing the music organically along with its “doctrine of soulfulness.” Hayes opens with a lovely portrait of his mother who was “an independent-minded, free-thinking spirit.” She had worked as a nurse in the psychiatric hospital in Ennis and as a waitress in an upscale restaurant in London. She had also spent a year training to become a nun, something Hayes did not learn about until his father’s death in 2001. Irish mothers can diligently secure their secrets. She only lasted a year in the convent, emerging with a lifelong suspicion of authority and a watchful eye for hypocrisy.

Like mothers in many traditional cultures, she gave up her ambitions and dreams to nurture and tend to her husband and family. Not to mention feeding the steady stream of musical visitors who came to commune with Martin’s father, PJ Hayes, leader of the famed Tulla Céilí Band. His father was a huge influence on him but he had other sound ancestors like his uncle, Paddy Canny and local fiddler and piper Martin Rochford. Other early musical influences included Tommy Potts, Joe Cooley, Tommy Peoples, Peadar O’Loughlin, Junior Crehan and Tony Mac Mahon.

Hayes has a number of aphorisms that he regularly delivers with style and precision. One of them is, “… the 1970s were the 60s in Ireland.” More sociologically sound than it seems on the surface, Hayes was a teenager in the late 70s so he knows whereof he speaks. Early on, he was a conforming non-conformist, a position that many young Irish people began to adopt in that era. He worried that he was, “… a socially compliant cultural manikin at the cost of a normal teenage life.”

But, wanted or not, social change was coming to rural Ireland in the 1970-80s and Hayes, like many others, took off for elsewhere. He is unsparing in describing the ups and downs of his life journey. He was enamored of the drink for a few years but giving it up brought more clarity and focus to his search for meaning. He ended up for a time living illegally under the radar in Chicago on an expired tourist visa, suffering the embarrassment of being ripped off by a shyster immigration attorney when he tried to become a legal resident. He had his fallings-out with fellow musicians and once smashed his fiddle on the head of band member.

His detailed and loving memories of childhood and adolescence are extraordinary. The book covers the paths not taken. At various points Hayes could have been lost to music by becoming a Fianna Fail political figure or a frozen food salesman or, briefly, a stock market trader in Chicago, or even a college graduate with a business degree (he dropped out after a year.) And his musical journey had some unproductive byways. Like playing banjo for a time in the Tulla Céilí Band, or playing an electric fiddle in a Chicago folk-rock band, Midnight Court, or accompanying ballad singers in a bar band.

At one concert, Hayes has had enough of the audience members who talk and drink noisily during the show. He asks them to leave, offers a refund, and they reluctantly depart. It’s an empowering moment when he exercises his right, with righteous anger, as a performer to play in conditions that suit his musical goals and ambitions.

Hayes has done the work to arrive at an authentic self and a workable philosophy of life. He came through a tough period when he felt he was losing his past, was disengaged from the present, and not creating a future. His personal spiritual search brought him back to the music. Integrity for any musician or artist is complicated, Hayes says, and “Sometimes, we’re just not ready to handle our own gifts.” He writes eloquently about his experiences teaching music where he revels in the mutual learning possibilities in that creative exchange.

He is deeply committed to making his music “invitational,” drawing the audience into emotional participation, a reciprocity that can be transcendent. Many older musicians frowned upon stage craft but Hayes found that he had to grapple with the dynamics of performance to bring his playing up to the highest possible levels.

Hayes is the preeminent exponent of Irish traditional music in the world. He has transcended his status as an Irish fiddler to achieve parity with other artists, classical and otherwise, in concert halls far beyond Ireland’s borders. He plays, “Music in the universal sense first, and Irish music second.” And performing in more formal settings brings its share of stress. Since traditional musicians don’t usually read music, playing extended pieces with an orchestra can produce a unique kind of terror and sense of inadequacy. Hayes describes this clearly in the book and it matches the experience that Tony Mac Mahon endured in his first performance with the Kronos Quartet.

He brings a high degree of artistic, intellectual and cultural credibility to Irish music, universally defined. Hayes was fortunate to have a long line of ancestors, many with musical abilities. In turn, he has become a good ancestor, taking the long view back and into the future. He is a master practitioner with the right blend of character, charisma and modesty for younger players to emulate. He has done a great deal to expand and enrich Ireland’s cultural capital as a musician himself and as a facilitator of combinations that have led Irish music into new pastures.

In the first post on this blog in 2008, Hayes and Cahill: Recalibrating the tradition, I concluded: “This is quantum music played with a bonsai sensibility, centrifugal explorations of notes and the spaces in between, pulsing with possibility.” Hayes observes that particular notes in tunes carry more weight than others. In Shared Notes, he weighs his words and deploys them as artfully as he draws out the ancient melodies.

Martin Hayes annotated Blogiography

I was fortunate to hear and see and, in time, talk with Hayes as his playing career ascended the heights. Here’s a collection of blog posts on Martin Hayes. He has been a source of great inspiration for my writing over the years. My first piece on Hayes in the San Francisco Irish Herald in September, 2000, was titled Zen and the Art of Fiddle Playing. I first heard him at the San Francisco Celtic Music Festival held each spring for ten years from 1991 under the watchful eye and ear of the late Eddie Stack.

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2018/08/fiddling-on-dock-of-bay-review-from.html

Later, in that same timeframe, I heard him play in various combinations at the Sebastopol Celtic Music which was guided by Cloud Moss. His book honors the memory of those festivals as seminal influences in his playing career. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Hayes made regular appearances in the San Francisco Bay Area. He savored the spaciousness and freedom he experienced in the city and felt that the spirit of Joe Cooley was still in residence.  

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2008/10/hayes-and-cahill-recalibrating.html

There was something very fitting about seeing Hayes and Cahill play in church buildings around the area. Apart from the acoustics, the settings induced a certain reverential expectation that was often fulfilled.

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2011/10/hayes-and-cahill-at-skyland-church.html

Hayes played many times at the legendary Berkeley concert venue, the Freight and Salvage. One of his appearances with Dennis Cahill from 2004 is recorded on the venue’s calendar wall.

One unique evening is recorded here when sound engineer Tesser Call facilitated an acoustic miracle.

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2012/03/hayes-and-cahill-break-sound-barrier-at.html

Hayes brought every one of his musical groups to Berkeley: twice with The Gloaming, once with his Blue Room Quartet, and once with Masters of the Tradition. Every show was memorable and magical. The two Gloaming concerts are reviewed here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2014/12/roaming-with-gloaming-in-berkeley.html

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-gloaming-returns-to-berkeley.html

And the mesmerizing evening with Hayes’ Quartet playing their Blue Room album is reviewed here:

https://theoldblognode.blogspot.com/2018/10/quadruple-delights-from-martin-hayes.html

And here are two insightful reviews of Hayes’ memoir by fellow-fiddle players, Niamh Ni Charra in the Irish Times and Toner Quinn in the Journal of Music.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/shared-notes-by-martin-hayes-personal-poignant-and-immensely-profound-1.4706747

https://journalofmusic.com/opinion/persist-other-side

Mac Mahon and Moloney: Two Irish music titans leave the scene

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Mac Mahon at home
Moloney in action

Two Irish music giants died last month. Tony Mac Mahon was a fervent guardian of the music traditions, an accordion maestro, a folklorist, and communicator par excellence. He lovingly championed the cultural riches of Irish music for his fellow citizens and shared that huge heritage with the world. Paddy Moloney was a genius and a musical entrepreneur, taking the ensemble structure initiated by Seán Ó Riada with Ceoltóirí Chualann to glorious and enduring heights with The Chieftains. With that ebullient band, he passionately presented the cornucopia of Irish music to the world, taking the music out of the pubs and into concert halls.

Both men leave behind immense cultural legacies, preserving and renewing melodic masterpieces and rare tunes, and seeding the revival of Irish traditional music. Mac Mahon was a collector, curator, broadcaster and often provocative commentator. Moloney was a brilliant band leader, a fine composer, and a generous musical partner.

Moloney was a master of the notoriously temperamental uilleann pipes, a skill characterized by the late Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin as akin to wrestling with an octopus. It’s fair to say he popularized octopus wrestling in many surprising corners of the world. Mac Mahon had a famously ambivalent relationship with the accordion and occasionally wished that he could have played the pipes, a more authentic traditional instrument, in his view.

Paddy Moloney’s life was celebrated recently on the RTE radio Rolling Wave show. One of his early achievements (sometimes forgotten with all his subsequent accomplished) was as CEO and producer for Claddagh Records. These included classic records like The Liffey Banks by Tommy Potts and The Star Above the Garter by Dennis Murphy and Julia Clifford. The role Moloney played in expanding Claddagh Records and the work of reinventing the label are described by Siobhán Long in a recent piece in the Irish Times. The Chieftains played regularly in the Bay Area and they were the last live concert I attended before the Covid lockdown in February 2020.

Moloney was often described as an ambassador for Irish music and culture but Mac Mahon had the equally vital role as emissary from the recent and not-so-recent past. He spoke for the vernacular Irish artists who kept the music alive during the worst of times, before and after the state achieved a measure of independence.

The Rolling Wave (another tune Mac Mahon favored) radio show also memorialized his contributions with praise and recollections from Liam O’Connor of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Noel Hill, a musical partner and soul-mate, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh who persuaded Tony to record Farewell to Music, his last album released on Raelach Records in 2016.

Mac Mahon, like Martin Hayes and Iarla Ó Lionáird, served as messengers from our traditional musical history, loyal spokesmen for the ancestors. His message was directed at Ireland and the Irish, his plea echoing Breandán Breathnach, that we love and respect the music because it is our own. Mac Mahon’s lifework may be viewed as a Tabharthas, an offering to the artists who preceded him and his peers. According to Manchán Magan’s fascinating book, Thirty-Two Words for Field, the term also means sacrifice. And there is little doubt that Mac Mahon sacrificed some parts of his life for his work. One of his favorite pieces was the lament The Wounded Huzzar and the title may have resonated with his experience.

O’Connor describes Mac Mahon as a force of nature, a sweet and forceful player who did not value technique but had tons of it. Noel Hill, who played with Tony on the classic recording, I gCnoc na Graí/Knocknagree, noted that their way of thinking about the music was very much aligned. They shared a sadness about what had gone before and the loss of the Irish language. And it could be heard in his playing. Caoimhin O’Raghalaigh said that Mac Mahon felt the real music is in the slow airs. He loved the sean-nós singers. His playing was like brushstrokes bringing out the dramatic depths and spaces in the tunes.

I never had the opportunity to meet Moloney in person, other than the time a few years back I saw him in his favorite Indian restaurant in Glasthule but chose not to intrude on him. I did have a phone interview with him once for a San Francisco Irish Herald article during one of the Chieftain’s almost annual U.S. tours. His “people” offered me ten minutes but Paddy was happy to talk for longer as he bemoaned the lack of proper tea in his Denver hotel room. He was naturally gracious and generous.

I had more time and interactions with Mac Mahon and count myself fortunate to have crossed paths with him as an aspiring music writer. I saw him play two extraordinary concerts with the Kronos Quartet at Stanford University in 2002 and at a Napa winery in 2003. David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet told me, “…when I hear something as remarkable and rare as Tony, I believe it. His playing has an extraordinary singing quality in the way he molds and shapes every note.” He was gracious and eloquent, eager to share his insights about the rich store of traditional music. He had an edge to him but his curmudgeon persona could be brilliant and funny.

He played a number of other concerts at smaller Bay Area venues during his 2002 visit. One was at the Resource Center for Non-Violence in Santa Cruz, hosted by Bob Breheny of the Celtic Music Society of Monterey and recorded by Pete Haworth of Molly’s Revenge fame. Tony was in fine form and partnered up with Japanese guitarist Junji Shirota, who has a refined ear for Irish traditional music. It was a magical evening and Tony responded wholeheartedly to the energy generated by an audience of aficionados who were very familiar with his oeuvre.

I was in attendance and later received the recording from Haworth. I treasure it and listen back frequently. And since it is better to listen to Mac Mahon play than read about him, here’s a rare live recording from that house concert in Santa Cruz. It’s the mournful air Amhrán na Leabhar

One track only whets the appetite so here’s another from the superb album, Mac Mahon from Clare from 2000. This old march, The Haughs of Cromdale, was recorded at Mac Mahon’s house in the Liberties with Barney McKenna, John Sheehan and Liam Ó Maonlaí. This is one of the tracks flagged by Paul O’Connor in his mind-blowing survey of Irish music available on Soundcloud, 200 tracks to mess with your idea of trad

Mac Mahon and Moloney had the benefit of growing up marinating in complete universes of traditional Irish culture, one rural and one urban, with music at the heart of it. Both men were strongly committed to uncovering and displaying the shapeliness of the harp tunes, the song-airs, and the music of great, largely unrecorded, older players. They worked at mastering the technical elements of their art and willingly absorbed the codes, customs, and wisdom embedded in that life. That’s what made them such credible messengers and advocates for the tradition. They will live long in our hearts and ears.

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