Culture That Made Me: Martin Hayes on great fiddlers and The African Queen 

In advance of the Masters of Tradition festival, Martin Hayes selects some of his touchstone influences 

Martin Hayes is curating the upcoming Masters of Tradition festival in Bantry. 

Martin Hayes, 62, grew up in Maghera, Co Clare. As a teenager, he toured as a fiddle player with The Tulla Céilí Band, which was co-founded by his father, PJ Hayes. 

In 1989, he formed Midnight Court with his late great collaborator, Chicago guitarist Dennis Cahill. In 1996, they formed an acoustic duo, and released three acclaimed albums. 

In 2011, he co-founded The Gloaming. Since 2003, he has been artistic director of the Masters of Tradition Festival, Bantry, August 21-25. 

• See: www.westcorkmusic.ie.

PJ Hayes

My father put the fiddle in my hands. That’s who I saw playing the fiddle as a child, seeing him play, and a whole world of music and musicians, and how they were. I wanted that. I learnt from him by osmosis. By the time I was 11 or 12, it turned into conversations about music. If something came on the radio, there would be opinions made right away: “Oh, this is good.” “That’s not so great.” “Don’t care for this.” Unedited opinions flying back and forth about what was and wasn’t good music.

Tommy Potts

Tommy Potts was a Dublin fiddle player that used to come down to Clare quite a bit. He would go to Ennis and visit with Seán Reid and go up to Kilmaley to visit Peter O’Loughlin. He’d come out to our house. It seemed like an annual trip he would make. He was like a John Coltrane of Irish music. He was a marginal figure, but fascinating. Still to this day, he did things that seem unattainable to me.

Willie Clancy

Willie Clancy was a remote figure for me in that he passed away before I came of age. I remember seeing images of his funeral when I was a child. It was one of those moments when Irish music was suffering from the loss of a key figure. But listening back to his recordings though – like some of his air playing is profoundly beautiful and so filled with intention and focus and beauty.

The African Queen

I had seen The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart many, many years ago. I kind of forgot about it. My wife said to me, just after we met, before we were married: “I think we need to watch The African Queen because it’s a story of a couple enduring the journey down a river in German East Africa, and the ups and downs.” We love that movie. Katherine Hepburn in it is a bit like my wife [laughs].

The Big Lebowski

Humour and comedy are very important to me. The Big Lebowski is a film I watch once a year. It’s truly funny. 

Jeff Bridges and John Goodman in The Big Lebowski.

We discount humour sometimes, but to make something funny like The Big Lebowski is a real challenge. That’s not easily done. There’s a reason why there are not so many great comedies. The Big Lebowski is the real deal.

Kevin Burke

I love Kevin Burke’s playing, particularly post-Bothy Band when he started doing duets with Mícheál Ó Domhnaill. That’s when I really became more familiar with him. I had seen him with the Bothy Band, but afterwards it was like he shone a little more. I’ll never forget he did an album called Promenade with Mícheál Ó Domhnaill. The things Kevin had that were most striking to me at that age was this incredible tone – he had a beautiful tone on his instrument – and the way he played. I was taken with that.

Dennis Cahill

Dennis Cahill’s influence was largely in what we were able to create and develop together. He became that person you dream of having – this great enabler of musical thought, like somebody who was and capable to shape himself willinginto what was needed in a particular situation. He helped shape how I play, how I think about music.

Jeff Buckley

Years ago I had a friend in Chicago, an art dealer and a rare book dealer. Before he passed away, he gave me Jeff Buckley’s album Grace. I think of him when I play it, but at the same time, it’s also this incredible album. 

The late Jeff Buckley. (Photo by David Gahr/Getty Images)

Jeff Buckley is powerful. He sings like an angel. The album has a full range of emotion and power.

Jordi Savall

Jordi Savall is a Catalan musician. He’s from outside Barcelona. He plays early music on the viola da gamba and the violin. He did a soundtrack to a movie called Tous Les Matins Du Monde. I became fascinated with the film when I saw it and I got the soundtrack. I completely fell in love with it. It was this early French baroque music that blew my mind. It was so incredibly beautiful. Years later, I got to know him and have actually done some concerts with him, which was a great stroke of fortune.

The Liffey Banks

The Liffey Banks is a Tommy Potts album with solo fiddle, playing reels and jigs, with a few hornpipes and airs. No accompaniment, no effects, nothing. It’s absolutely Tommy Potts in free flow, being genuine. The music has a constant feeling of truthfulness in it all the way through. It feels completely real. The more you listen to it, the better it gets. It’s amazing.

You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment

You Are What You Eat is a four-part series documentary on Netflix. I watched it in one go. It’s about these twins choosing for eight weeks to eat different diets like, say, a vegetarian diet or an all-meat diet. In the midst of it, they show us how meat is produced, how chicken is managed, how pigs are reared and produced. For a finish you’re going, “OK, this has to stop. This actually doesn’t work.” It’s shocking in terms of showing you the impact of meat production and how unsustainable it is.

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music

A book I read recently – I had the honour of launching it – is Toner O’Quinn’s What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music. Oddly enough, we’re going to discuss this book at the Masters of Tradition Festival.

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, by Toner Quinn

This book is a collection of various things Toner has written, as founder of The Journal of Music. He brings the reader through a history of traditional music in recent times, and how it fits inside a more contemporary world of music, classical and otherwise. He writes very intelligently. He makes you think about music. It’s very interesting.

The Ezra Klein Show

I have something of a political curiosity that’s been with me all my life. I follow Ezra Klein of the New York Times. He does a podcast fairly regularly, about twice a week. I find him to be remarkably bright, lucid and smart. I enjoy hearing his analysis. It’s mostly an analysis of American politics, but also world affairs and world politics.