Artist Bio:
Any discussion of contemporary traditional Irish music has to begin with the Chieftains. Over the past 40-plus years and nearly as many albums, the band has achieved iconic status, touring every corner of the globe and selling millions of albums. And having established themselves as Ireland's premier masters of the folkloric canon, the Chieftains have avoided complacency by incorporating outside influences, collaborating with stars from assorted world-music genres and even mainstream pop.
The Chieftains were formed in 1963, the name derived from a poem called "Death of a Chieftain." The core membership was drawn from folk revivalist Seán Ó Ríada's trail-blazing Ceoltóirí Chualann orchestra and headed by Dublin-born All-Ireland-winning uilleann piper and flautist Paddy Moloney. He brought in fiddler Martin Fay, flautist Michael Tubridy, tin-whistle virtuoso Seán Potts and bodhrán player David Fallon. This configuration made one album together and then disbanded. But the musicians reformed five years later, with the elderly Fallon replaced by Peader Mercier and having added fiddler Seán Keane to the lineup. Belfast 's great harpist, multi-instrumentalist and composer Derek Bell, having sat in with the group several times, was invited to come on board in 1974, remaining until his tragic death in 2002. Most of the participants prudently held on to clerical day jobs until 1975, when the Chieftains were named Melody Maker's group of the year, beating out the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and began playing together full-time, celebrating their new status with a sold-out performance at London's Albert Hall. Succeeding years saw additional roster changes: Mercier, Potts and Tubridy left and bodhrán player/vocalist Kevin Conneff and flautist Matt Molloy signed on.
Of the band's 10 numbered early recordings for the Claddagh label, The Chieftains Four, a hugely popular 1973 release that included music used in the score to the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon, did the most to gain them an international following. Guided by Moloney's charm, business sense and keen observation of shifting trends, the Chieftains' singles became fixtures on Irish-pub jukeboxes from Dublin to Sydney. The band was routinely making the Billboard charts and garnered the first of its 19 Grammy nominations in 1978 for The Chieftains Seven. The group now has more bookings than it can handle, and the Chieftains' calendar eventually included an annual SRO Saint Patrick's Day gig at New York's Carnegie Hall.
By the '80s, the Chieftains' recorded output included several award-winning soundtracks and the band maintained its newly official position as Ireland's musical ambassadors with hundreds of live performances, some of which incorporated step-dancers such as the pre-Riverdance Micheal Flatley and Jean Butler. Having spent so many years playing exclusively Irish music, the Chieftains then embarked upon an ongoing series of mixed-genre adventures, of which some were inevitably more engaging than others. In 1983, the band not only became the first group to play in the United States Capitol rotunda but made a momentous visit to China, performing with local musicians and commemorating the event with an album, The Chieftains in China (1987) and video. On Celtic Wedding (1987) the group explored the music of Brittany, while Santiago (1996), featuring gaita (bagpipe) player Pablo Núñez, is a lively romp through the traditions of Galicia, a province in Spain whose music mixes especially well with that of Ireland.
North America entered the spotlight on Fire in the Kitchen, wherein Canadians of Celtic descent received their due, and in the brilliant Appalachian/Scots-Irish triptych, Another Country (1992) Down the Old Plank Road: The Nashhville Sessions (2002) and Further Down the Old Plank Road: The Nashville Sessions (2003), which feature American country luminaries like Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Chet Atkins, the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band and Ricky Scaggs sitting in. But while Irish Heartbeat With Van Morrison (1988) exudes a ragged, tough beauty, The Long Black Veil (1995), featured the Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor and Ry Cooder; and Tears of Stone (1999), boasted the Corrs, Bonnie Raitt, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Loreena McKennitt, Joan Osborne, Joni Mitchell.
Even if the Chieftains' later career includes hammy turns like an appearance on the soap opera One Life to Live, the band remains utterly tireless in their quest to attract new audiences to their homeland's music. Although the Irish folk revival began with Seán Ó Ríada, it was indubitably the Chieftains who solidified his gains and made his legacy into an international phenomenon, paving the way for all came after. —Christiana Roden
