The quiet radicalism of the Chieftains

Pop quiz time: which act was named Melody Maker Group of the Year in 1975? The answer is not, as you might expect, some testosterone-fuelled blues-rock outfit or a hip gang of proto-punk gunslingers, but a gaggle of semi-professional Irish musicians who performed trad tunes sitting down, dressed for church in cardigans, sensible shoes, shirts and ties.

The Chieftains were so far from rock and roll they met it coming back the other way. On the cover of Irish Heartbeat, a later collaboration with Van Morrison, they could be mistaken for a loose affiliation of farmers, minor office clerks and earnest ornithologists waiting for a bus outside the town hall. It was a brilliant disguise. The Chieftains wore their radicalism lightly, but radical they were.

A new double compilation album and DVD, Chronicles, explains (almost) all. Celebrating 60 years of covert boundary pushing, it might lean a little too heavily on starry collaborations — a gratuitous Jagger here; a flagrant Paolo Nutini there — but it is nonetheless a solid overview of the band’s long reach, although sadly what was intended as a celebration has become a eulogy. Paddy Moloney, the Chieftains’ talismanic whistle player, uilleann piper, founding member and leader, died last month at the age of 83. Moloney was the twinkling maypole around which a slowly revolving cast of exemplary musicians twirled. Now, only two long-standing members remain: Kevin Conneff and Matt Molloy, relative newcomers both, having joined in the mid-1970s. The last leg of the Chieftains’ farewell Irish Goodbye tour was postponed in March last year due to Covid. You wonder whether it will ever conclude.

The Chieftains formed in 1962, and the albums they recorded between 1964 and 1980, helpfully titled Chieftains 1-10, changed the nature of the relationship between Irish traditional music and the wider world.