Remembering Irish Musician Paddy Moloney

(SOUNDBITE OF CHIEFTAINS' "LOTS OF DROPS OF BRANDY")

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Let's now remember someone we lost as the week began - the front frontman for the Irish band The Chieftains, Paddy Moloney.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHIEFTAINS' "LOTS OF DROPS OF BRANDY")

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Paddy Moloney circled the globe with his tin whistle, sharing the sounds that he grew up with around Dublin.

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PADDY MOLONEY: What we're playing is soul music. It's the music of the soul. It's something that's inside you. You inherit it.

INSKEEP: That's Moloney in a 1976 interview on All Things Considered. He often pointed out what Irish traditional music shares with the folk music of other countries.

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MOLONEY: I was at an Indian concert. There was a Bangladesh girl singing a song. I just could not believe it. The first eight bars of it was a tune that we have called "Eibhlin A Run," "Eileen My Love," and just a little bit of it on the tin whistle (playing tin whistle).

MARTÍNEZ: In an effort to drive home how universal Irish music is, Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains often covered songs from other traditions, and they welcome collaborators from a wide variety of backgrounds. Elvis Costello, Luciano Pavarotti, Los Tigres del Norte and Mick Jagger are just some of them.

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CHIEFTAINS: (Singing) Nobody knows love, nobody sees, nobody knows but me.

INSKEEP: Up until the pandemic stopped it, Moloney and The Chieftains were in the middle of a world tour that they called The Irish Goodbye. He died on Tuesday at 83.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LONG BLACK VEIL")

CHIEFTAINS: (Singing) She walks these hills in a long, black veil. She visits my grave... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.