The Man who Inspired the Chieftains

Paddy Moloney and his band the Chieftains have correctly received a lot of credit for introducing traditional Irish music to much of the world. But what about the musician who inspired Moloney and first employed most of the Chieftains? That would be composer, musician and bandleader Seán Ó Riada (1931-1971), the single most influential individual in the revival of Irish folk music and someone who should be better known than he is.

Seán Ó Riada (born John Riedy in Cork City) was a composer specializing in avant-garde works when he abandoned his wife and son for a few years of drunken debauchery in France and Italy. His forgiving wife Ruth finally fetched him home to Ireland and his music changed once he was back on familiar ground.

By the late 1950s, Ó Riada was writing scores for plays and films in which he used traditional Irish folk tunes and “sean-nós” (“old style”) songs in orchestral settings, somewhat similar to what Ralph Vaughan Williams had done with English folk songs or Aaron Copland had done in this country.

His most acclaimed work in this area was the music for Mise Eire (I Am Ireland), a 1959 documentary film about the founding of the Irish Republic. The next year, Ó Riada recruited a group of folk musicians from around Dublin to play music in the play Song of the Anvil. The musicians, a foursome that included a young piper from Dublin named Paddy Moloney, practiced every week at Ó Riada’s house. The play was a success—especially the music—which led Ó Riada to his next big idea.

Between 1960 and 1969, Ó Riada led Ceoltóirí Cualann, a band that played traditional Irish songs and tunes arranged for piano, fiddle, flute, pipes, accordions, bodhrán, whistles, bones and harpsichord (which Ó Riada played trying to approximate the sound of the clarsach, an Irish harp). Ó Riada also played—and revived—the bodhrán, a hand-held drum that had almost slipped into extinction.

The roster of musicians in Ó Riada’s ensemble included such players as fiddlers Martin Fay, John Kelly and Seán Keane, flutist Michael Tubridy, bodhrán player Peadar Mercier, accordionist Sonny Brogan, and piper Paddy Moloney; Fay, Tubridy, Keane and Mercier would all end up with Moloney in the Chieftains.

Ceoltóirí Cualann was also a success, prompting Moloney to experiment with smaller ensembles—duos, trios, quartets and quintets—playing essentially the same repertoire. By 1962, those experiments had evolved into the Chieftains and the band recorded its first album. From then until 1969, when Ceoltóirí Cualann broke up, the personnel of the two bands overlapped.

Ceoltóirí Cualann recorded a handful of albums, including Ó Riada and O Riada Sa Gaiety, and also recorded the soundtrack for the film Playboy of the Western World. After the band broke up, Ó Riada turned to religious choral music, founding Cór Chúil Aodha, a male choir. Seán Ó Riada died in 1971 at the age of 40, from cirrhosis of the liver. He’s buried in Ballyvourney, County Cork.