“This book traces a musical thread and a life story that goes all the way from my beginnings, on a small farm with horse-drawn machinery... to a life of musical performance and collaboration on stages all over the world.” So promises the slick cover of this musical tome, a memoir from the pen of one of Ireland’s most celebrated and renowned traditional Irish musicians, east Clare man, Martin Hayes, and a promise which, as it transpires, is more than adequately fulfilled.
Memoirs can be difficult beasts. By their very nature they require the author to write extensively of themselves while keeping their readers engaged from cover to cover. Truly successful endeavours rely on honesty, humility, a willingness to self-analyse, and a decent dollop of humour and self-deprecation. They force the soul-barer to shoehorn a lifetime into a bitesize unit, while requesting the witness understand beyond those confines. And they require an element of trust between writer and reader.
Trust is a common theme throughout Shared Notes. The trust Hayes struggled to find in himself, to believe that his obvious talent had a purpose, and that that purpose would make itself known. The lack of trust in an education system that punished those sensitive souls who didn’t fit in. The trust his mother Peggy had that he would eventually find his way. The trust placed in Hayes by his musical elders that he would help preserve the tradition. The trust he learned to place in an audience, and that which he received in return.
Hayes's artful use of language is as soulful, as skilled and as authentic as the music he makes
Hayes’s rich musical style, recognisable in its uniqueness while simultaneously of the tradition, is one where every note has its carefully considered place, and every turn of phrase is a musical experiment which nonetheless respects and never strays too far from the melody at its core. This same consideration is meticulously applied to Hayes’s writing. Whether describing the silver cobwebs stretched across potholes passed on his walk to primary school of a dewy morning, the tea and rosary filled late-night drives from performing with the Tulla Céilí Band, or the increasing doubt he experienced as a result of what he termed “a string of self-inflicted failures and mistakes”, his artful use of language is as soulful, as skilled and as authentic as the music he makes.
Naturally there is much here that will be of interest to music lovers of all persuasions. Joe Cooley, Paddy Canny, and recently departed Tony McMahon share space with Paul Simon, Rory Gallagher and L Shankar in Hayes’s musical reminiscences. Thought processes which dictate the composition of a set list, or how a festival is curated are generously shared alongside the challenges and unpredictability of the touring life. The Hayes wit is at its sharpest when describing the various predicaments he finds himself in while trying to make ends meet: unsuccessfully attempting to heat frozen dinners in a factory canteen for a starving, unimpressed workforce; being demoted from carpenter to general labourer on a Chicago construction site because he couldn’t hold a hammer or running around somewhat aimlessly on the floor of the futures market at Chicago Board of Trade.
It is a record of traditions past, of people and a way of life long gone, all preserved beautifully in Hayes's eloquent and frequently philosophical writing
Those interested in social history and the old traditions are equally well served. Readers can learn of the dying art of “tracing”, a form of storytelling popular when Hayes was young, or the proper way to cut turf – “it had to be done with precision and taste. There was an aesthetic component to it that was just as important as anything else.” A wealth of knowledge when listing local place names is clearly evident, learned possibly from time spent herding on Maghera mountain. Observations shared of America, the vastness of its majestic landscape and the busy metropolises of Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco are equally enthralling.
Hayes has described the east Clare style of traditional Irish music as a niche within a niche. The opening scene of this memoir is set in Miltown Malbay, where young Hayes is listening to his father and the rest of the Tulla Céilí Band while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong have just landed on the moon. In a week which saw Nasa astronaut Cady Coleman pay tribute to The Chieftains piper Paddy Moloney on his passing, and whose tin whistle she brought to space in 2013, it is reminder that what is niche can also be universal.
Shared Notes does far more than simply take the reader on a musical journey. It is a record of traditions past, of people and a way of life long gone, all preserved beautifully in Hayes’s eloquent and frequently philosophical writing. It is also a record of the present, a celebration of a living tradition still bursting with potential and energy. This personal, poignant and, at times, immensely profound memoir would make the elders proud.
Niamh Ní Charra is a musician, composer and archivist
