The Chieftains

If there’s one Irish band you need to know, it’s The Chieftains! This trad band is undoubtedly one of the best-known and most frequently heard in Irish pubs! This group brings together all the traditional Irish instruments to create true standards of Irish trad music! A must-listen!
Chieftains’ quarry
Birth of an Outstanding Group
The Chieftains (“the clan”) were born in 1963 in Milltown. Paddy Moloney, a former member of “The Square”, was the nucleus of the rest of the band: Martin Fay on violin, Sean Potts on tin whistle, Michaël Trudy on flute and David Fallon on bodhràn, replaced on the second album by Peadar Mercier.

The band soon met with great success, and the line-up expanded to include a harp for the next album (1971) with harpist Derek Bell. It was in this year that the Chieftains set themselves apart from the rest of the Irish bands, with a well-defined style.

From then on, the Irish have been snapping up their albums, and consider their music to be a veritable revival of traditional Irish music.
Success goes beyond Irish borders
By now the band had achieved international fame, and in 1975 they wrote the music for the film “Barry Lyndon”, and “Women of Ireland” toured the world. Peadar Mercier hands over the reins to Kevin Conneff on bodhràn. In 1977, the Chieftains took part in the soundtrack to Yves Boisset’s film “Le Taxi Mauve”. The following year, the band won a Grammy for “Chieftains7” in the World Music category.

Then came another change in the band: Michael Tubridy and Sean Potts left and former Planxty member Matt Molloy joined, and the Chieftains won their second Grammy for Boil The Breakfast Early.

Their music was exported as far as China, where they played on the Great Wall. A first.

Paddy Moloney’s uilleann pipe joins a symphony orchestra to play Tristan et Iseult.

In 1986, commissioned by the National Geographic Special, the group recorded “Ballad of the Irish” horse. Two years later, The Chieftains launched into Breton music.
The 90s: a time of consecration
The 90s would be the decade of consecration. In 1991, “The Bells of Dublin” went gold. In 1997, the group collaborated on numerous occasions with Carlos Nunez, a player of the gaïta, a Galician bagpipe.

The last two albums are “Tears of Stones” in duets, and “Water of the Well”, which revives traditional music from different regions of Ireland.