Paddy Moloney, the playful however disciplined frontman and bagpiper of the Chieftains, a band that was on the forefront of the worldwide revival of conventional Irish music performed with conventional devices, died on Monday in Dublin. He was 83.
His daughter Aedin Moloney confirmed the dying, at a hospital, however didn’t specify the trigger.
For almost 60 years the Chieftains toured extensively, launched greater than two dozen albums and received six Grammy Awards. They had been notably identified for his or her collaborations with artists like Van Morrison, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Nanci Griffith and Luciano Pavarotti.
“Over the Sea to Skye,” the Chieftains’ collaboration with the flutist James Galway, peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard classical album chart in 1996.
“Our music is centuries outdated, however it is extremely a lot a dwelling factor,” Mr. Moloney informed The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989. “We don’t use any flashing lights or smoke bombs or acrobats falling off the stage.” He added, “We attempt to talk a celebration feeling, and that’s one thing that everyone understands.”
In 2012, when he was vice chairman, President Biden informed Folks journal that his need was to sing “Shenandoah” with the Chieftains “if I had any musical expertise.” He invited them to carry out at his inauguration this 12 months, however Covid-related restrictions stored them from touring.
Mr. Moloney was a grasp of many devices: He performed the uileann pipes (the nationwide bagpipes of Eire), the tin whistle, the bodhran (a sort of drum) and the button accordion. He was additionally the band’s lead composer and arranger.
Requested in 2010 on the NPR quiz present “Wait, Wait … Don’t Inform Me” what he thought was the sexiest instrument, he selected the pipes.
“I typically name it the octopus,” he mentioned, “and so, I imply, that’s one thing that will get each a part of you transferring.”
The Chieftains carried out on the Nice Wall of China, in Nashville and in Berlin to have a good time the autumn of the Berlin Wall in 1990, becoming a member of with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd to play “The Wall.”
Their best-known recordings included “Cotton Eyed Joe,” “O’Sullivan’s March,” “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “Lengthy Black Veil” (with Mr. Jagger). Their 1992 album “One other Nation,” a collaboration with nation artists like Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and Chet Atkins, received the Grammy for finest up to date people album.
Their different Grammys included one for finest pop collaboration with vocals for “Have I Instructed You Recently That I Love You?,” a collaboration with Mr. Morrison from their album “The Lengthy Black Veil,” launched in 1995, and one for finest world album, for “Santiago” (1996), consisting of Spanish and Latin American music.
Mr. Moloney had an affinity for nation music.
“I at all times thought of Nashville like one other a part of Eire, right down to the south or one thing,” he mentioned on the web site of the Tennessee Performing Arts Heart in 2020. “Once I’ve come over there and performed with musical geniuses like Sam Bush or Jerry Douglas or Earl Scruggs, they decide every thing up so simply. You don’t need to duck and sprint.”
The final observe on “One other Nation” — “Finale: Did You Ever Go A-Courtin’, Uncle Joe/Will the Circle Be Unbroken” — options Ms. Harris, Ricky Skaggs and the Nitty Gritty Dust Band. Rambles, a cultural arts journal, described it as “the closest you’ll come to an Irish hooley on report,” a reference to an Irish get together with music. The observe, the journal mentioned, gave the impression of “a number of pints had been quaffed and the boxty bread was handed round earlier than the assembled greats of music determined to have a musical free-for-all.”
Patrick Moloney was born on Aug. 1, 1938, in Donnycarney, in northern Dublin. His father, John, labored within the accounting division of the Irish Glass Bottle Firm. His mom, Catherine (Conroy) Moloney, was a homemaker.
Paddy got here from a musical household: Certainly one of his grandfathers performed the flute, and his Uncle Stephen performed within the Ballyfin Pipe Band. Paddy started enjoying a plastic tin whistle at 6 and commenced learning the uileann pipes shortly afterward, below the tutelage of man often called the “King of the Pipers.”
He took to the pipes simply, gave his first public live performance when he was 9 and carried out on native streets.
“There have been 5 pipers across the Donnycarney space,” he informed Eire’s Personal journal in 2019. “I’d go across the cul-de-sac enjoying just like the pied piper, and my friends could be following behind me.”
After leaving college within the Fifties, he began working at Baxendale & Firm, a constructing provides firm, the place he met his future spouse, Rita O’Reilly. He joined the normal Irish band Ceoltóirí Chualann in 1960 and fashioned the Chieftains in 1962; the identify got here from the brief story “Demise of a Chieftain” by the Irish creator John Montague.
Within the Sixties and ’70s, Mr. Moloney was an govt of Claddagh Data, of which he was a founder, and produced or oversaw 45 albums in people, conventional, classical, poetry and spoken phrase.
The Chieftains — who hit it massive within the mid-Seventies with sold-out live shows on the Royal Albert Corridor in London — had been strictly an instrumentalist ensemble at first. However within the Nineteen Eighties the band pivoted from their early purism, and Mr. Moloney emerged as a composer, writing new music steeped in Irish custom.
The Chieftains started to mix Irish music with types from the Celtic diaspora in Spain and Canada in addition to bluegrass and nation from america. They collaborated with well-known rock and pop musicians and with a global assortment of musicians as far-flung as Norway, Bulgaria and China.
On his personal, Mr. Moloney branched into writing and arranging music for movies, together with “Barry Lyndon” (1975), “Babe: Pig within the Metropolis” (1998) and “Gangs of New York” (2002).
Along with his spouse and daughter, he’s survived by two sons, Aonghus and Padraig; 4 grandchildren; and a sister, Sheila.
In 2012, on the fiftieth anniversary of their founding, the Chieftains teamed up with 12 people, nation, bluegrass, rockabilly and indie rock artists — together with Bon Iver, the Decembrists, the Low Anthem and Imelda Might — to report the album “Voice of Ages.” Additionally they launched into a tour that ended at Carnegie Corridor on St. Patrick’s Day.
“What’s taking place right here with these younger teams,” Mr. Moloney informed The New York Instances on the time, explaining the album’s idea, “is that they’re coming again to the melody, again to the true stuff, the roots and the people feeling of all of them. I can hear any of them singing people songs.”