By Jamie O’Brien
It must have been the early 1960s, I can’t remember exactly when, but someone must have traveled back to Ireland and brought home an LP. I just remember it being being played and, for me, it was a new world opening up. I’d never heard anything like it.
Sure, I knew the pipes, the fiddle, the flute, but I’d never heard them played this way. Images conjured up in my young mind of green fields and rolling hills — of Ireland. The album had a simple title, the name of the group: the Chieftains.
So began my love affair with Irish traditional music.
What I’d heard at family gatherings up to then was so different: people had bashed out tunes on piano, scratched away on fiddle, belted out songs. But here was a pure sound, instruments singing out and telling stories. What a revelation.
I first saw the Chieftains a decade later at the Fairfield Halls in Croyden, an hour by bus from my Brixton home. What a performance: master musicians and a perfect show. I think it was then that I decided that I had to play the music and sing the songs of my childhood.
The Chieftains 1 through 10, the Breton album, the Chinese album, the country album and more, I devoured them all. And I came to realize that music is international. For some reason, I had always compartmentalized music. If I played country, then I’d play country. If I played folk, I’d play folk. But I learned that cultures are not isolated, but are interconnected. I discovered Irish songs with American versions; music from Alsace that bore more relation to Galway or Cork than it it did to France or Germany. Today for example, I still play Irish music, but I also play Hawaiian – and my friend and musician, George Kahumoku Jr. and I put them together when we present evenings of Celtic Aloha.
Over the years, it’s been Paddy Moloney who has directly and indirectly led me on my musical journey. Even as a writer. I’ve interviewed him countless times over the years, but to be honest, I think ‘chatted’ is a better word than ‘interviewed’. He was so easy to talk to, so attentive to whatever I had to say, so helpful (especially in my early days as a writer).
Recently, I found it necessary to cull my CD collection — we had run out of room and many albums had to go. But the first ones that I put back on the shelf were my Chieftains CDs and LPs.
Paddy Moloney introduced me to the music, entertained me countless times in concert, provided new directions for my music and provided rich material for articles. After all he’s done for the music and for Ireland, it’s hard to imagine a world without him. Go raibh maith agat, Paddy.