The Chieftains:
A Return to Tradition
An article from 1977 by David Pietrusza
In taverns dark with age and musty with the aroma of Guinness and Harp, and in concert
arenas as prestigious as Carnegie Hall, a new generation of admirers of traditional Irish music
has arisen. Generally it is a young crowd. Often it is not even Irish, but in the soulful and
poignant melodies it finds something eternal, something which touches upon everyone's origins.
Often the sound is "cerebel,"a collection of ballads challenging the Black and Tans or tearfully
rallying all the counties together. Increasingly though, it is straight-out "traditional" reels and
jigs, slides and Kerry polkas played on a collection of truly medieval instruments, tin whistles,
fiddles, harps, uilleann pipes, hones, and goatskin drums. And the unchallenged champion of
this form of Gaelic music is a seven-man group from Dublin called the Chieftains.
They are, wrote a critic for Britain's Guardian, "superior because of the sheer quality of their
playing, the quality of [leader Paddy] Maloney's arrangements, and the fact that in their music
there is room for everyone to improvise so that no two performances are ever the same. The
music varies from grand, ancient melodies ... played on the pipes, the fiddle or the harp,
through to passages as delicately arranged as if they were for a chamber group, and then
boisterous jigs and reels. There is no folk academic stuffiness about their playing, but a
spontaneity and vitality that ensures that the oldest of songs are treated with contemporary
excitement."
For nearly fifteen years these instrumentalists bided their time, built up their repertoire and
their following, turned out five respectably selling albums, scored the sound track for the film
Barry Lyndon--and with a strong streak of practicality kept at their old jobs, unwilling to turn
fulltime professionals.
The group's leader, Paddy Maloney, a craggy-faced man with a huge Irish grin who pumps
away at the uillean or elbow pipes, and Sean Potts, the band's tin whistle virtuoso, got the
whole venture started when they signed on with Sean O'Riarda's folk orchestra, Ceolteoiri
Chaulann, in 1960. Soon afterwards fiddlers Martin Fay and Sean Keene and Peadar
Mercier, who handled the bodhran or goatskin drum--an instrument resembling a giant
tambourine--enlisted and the quintet became the Chieftains.
They produced their first recording in 1964 but they held on to their positions as postmen,
administrators, purchasing agents, and construction foremen, and did not come forth with
Chieftains 2 for another five years.
Joining eventually were consulting engineer Michael Tubridy, who specializes in the concertina
hut also feels at home with the flute and the tin whistle, and Belfast harpist Derek Bell, the
only trained musician in the assemblage, who strums an ancient lyre in the style of the harps of
Queen Mary and Brian Boru and also doubles on a tiompan or Irish dulcimer and on the
more conventional oboe.
It was not until their work on the Academy Award, winning soundtrack of the generally
ill-fated Barry Lyndon that the Chieftains moved beyond the range of Irish music fanciers and
began reaching a far wider audience--an audience so diverse and appreciative that in 1975
Music Maker, the British equivalent of Billboard, named the group, as not only the folk
group of the year but the group of the year for all categories "for making unfashionable music
fashionable."
They are just as unstylish in appearance as in repertoire. "We look terrible on stage in our
sweaters and suits," admits Paddy Maloney. "We don't jump around, we have no gimmicks,
and we don't even have any metallic instruments except the steel strings on the harp. But it
seems that people are listening more to music now. And we don't want to play to folk
audiences. We wanted to play to rock audiences, the lot."
That ambition may at first seem strange, but the Chieftains have succeeded amazingly well
with many varied segments of the music-listening public, from writing the music for the
London National Theatre's first production and playing Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall to
touring with Jerry Garcia's Grateful Dead and rock guitarist Eric Clapton.
With their success a singular change has come over the Chieftains--the replacement of
Peadar Mercier by Dubliner Kevin Conneff. Aside from giving a slightly more youthful cast,
the move accelerates their switch from strictly instrumental performing to occasional
vocalizing, a decision presaged on their latest album, Bonaparte's Retreat, which includes
vocals on the title offering by Dolores Keane.
Nevertheless, it appears that no other great innovations are envisioned by the Chieftains, a
musical aggregation that has arrived this far by a strict adherence to traditional forms. "There
is now a tremendous interest in this kind of music," says Sean Potts, "and we are doing our
best to preserve its purity."
"We can go back to our old jobs anytime," adds Paddy Maloney, "We know exactly what
we want, and we're not going to do it any other way."