This article is from page 18 of the 2012-02-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
THE VOICE of one of Clare’s greatest living traditional musicians is set to appear in a revolutionary new album – which has been composed entirely from a series of spoken word interviews with some of the leading lights in Irish music.
East Clare fiddler Martin Hayes will feature on a new record entitled ‘The Speech Project’ which is the brainchild of Mancunian fiddler, composer and producer Gerry Diver.
Diver has taken a series of interviews with Hayes, as-well-as the likes of Christy Moore, and Damien Dempsey and harnessed the technical cadence of their speech patterns and composed melody lines to complement the musicality inherent in their words.
This revolutionary new way of composing music has led to a number of interesting discoveries – not least of which being the fact that Martin Hayes speaks in the key of G-minor.
According to Diver, Martin Hayes’ Clare brogue “drips with musical- ity”.
“There was even some parallels between Hayes’ words and music. A lot of his tunes are in G minor and Martin speaks a lot in G minor, too,” said Diver.
“Really, this all started as a happy accident. I heard an interview with Galway accordion player Joe Cooley and just happened to notice his voice pitch. There was no grand plan.
“Some of it was about the speech melody – taking the pitch and rhythm and putting those into a musical context by finding the musical and melodic contours that are there. For me, the parts that tended to stand out were where the interview became quite emotionally charged.
“So, for example, when Christy Moore talks about something that was quite emotional for him, he tended to go into D minor. So there’s a link between emotion and the more tonal parts of speech.
“I think people might listen to The Speech Project at different levels. They might listen to the content – to what is being said, but, in terms of the context, there’s more of a slight of ear pattern happening as well. Music sometimes expresses things which words can, and I hope that I’ve managed to find that balance between content, emotion and context.”
After spending decades based in America, Martin Hayes returned to East Clare last year. He has recently released his second album as part of the Triúr group which also includes Peader O’Riada and Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh.