Tradition and Aspiration
Martin Hayes
Fiddle-player Martin Hayes on traditional music in the twenty-first century
Like most other musicians, I have a lot of strong feelings and beliefs about music that I would rarely share unless I felt safe in doing so. I grew up listening to people with hugely strong opinions on what was good, and what was bad – people like my father, Peter O’Loughlin, Martin Rochford and Paddy Canny. They didn’t even say ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they said right or wrong!
When I started to play, as a child, I didn’t have any clear opinion about what was traditional or what was not traditional. In fact, my musical vision centered around whatever musicians I heard and whatever records I had in my collection. I wasn’t even aware of such a thing as an East Clare style of fiddle playing until I went to West Clare – but I did then begin to make that distinction.
As a child I didn’t like Sliabh Luachra music, and I didn’t like Donegal music. This was to become a deep moral issue for me; I adhered quite strictly to what I was familiar with musically and it took me until I was an adult to actually come around to understanding what Donegal music is and what Sliabh Luachra music is – and this is after having played obsessively throughout my teenage years.
Though I did, of course, come to an understanding of these styles, it was a long time before the Donegal...
