MORE USED to packing out concert halls around the world, renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes yesterday generously imparted his musical knowledge to spellbound students in Room 22 at St Joseph’s Secondary School in Spanish Point.
At the 38th annual Willie Clancy Summer School, 23 fiddle students sat around the classroom as the east Clare musician and music school veteran told them in their playing “to be true to yourself no matter what”.
The virtuoso fiddler is part of a group that school director Muiris Ó Rócháin described as “the finest artists anywhere in Ireland” who come to teach the hundreds of students from all over the world on the first week of July every year at the summer school.
Along with the hundreds of students attending the week, thousands of traditional music enthusiasts also descend on the nearby town of Miltown Malbay from morning until late into the night for the sessions taking place in the thronged pubs.
During his inspirational class, Hayes invokes the names of his late father P Joe and the late Junior Crehan in advising the students to try their best to sing the tunes they play.
“The way they sang the tune, I got a sense of what it was they were aspiring to say. In the singing, you can create an ideal version of the tune that suits you and you get the emotional feel” he says.
He advises the students “to let the singing into your body in a certain way.
“I’m singing in there and replicating it on the fiddle and the bow is like a breath all of a sudden. There is a conscious control of the bow and you are making it shape the sound.”
The US-based fiddler suspends his touring schedule each year to be at the school and he tells the students: “By the time you’re my age, nobody will care, and I mean nobody, how many All-Irelands you have.
“It doesn’t mean anything, I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me for five minutes no matter how many All-Irelands I won, unless they wanted to hear me. Nobody will stop to hear a tune you have to play or be interested unless there is something deep within the music.
“Be true to yourself no matter what,” advises Hayes. “Please don’t get sucked into trying to figure out what the people in the competitions want and I am by no means certain if they have anything to offer.
“The real beauty of this music is that it cannot be measured at all, it cannot be ranked, it cannot be examined, there is no way that it can be judged on those terms,” he added.
