(SOUNDBITE OF CHIEFTAINS' "LOTS OF DROPS OF BRANDY")
A MARTINEZ, 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
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).
MARTINEZ: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LONG BLACK VEIL")
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.