National world music act
The Chieftains
World beaters
The Best Music Poll may be just 11 years old, but
this seems like at least the 30th time that the Chieftains have won the World
category (okay, four years out of 11, including the last three). The wonder
boys of Irish music have been around for some 37 years and 30 CDs; they started
out on a traditional path, taking the high road (fiddles, flutes and whistles,
uilleann pipes, harp, bodhrán, tiompáin -- no guitar, accordion,
or piano), but over the years they've played with everyone from Mick Jagger and
Sting to Chet Atkins and Emmylou Harris to Chinese orchestras, collecting
multiple Grammys along the way.
This past year's CD, Tears of Stone (RCA Victor), is the all-male
sextet's overdue toast to the ladies, as they back up vocalists Bonnie Raitt,
Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, the Rankin Family, the Corrs, Sinéad
O'Connor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Loreena McKennitt, and Joan Osborne and jam
with fiddle players Eileen Ivers, Natalie MacMaster, and Máire
Breatnach. The idea was, Paddy Moloney explains in his liner note, "to marry
the many-faceted voices of contemporary women artists from around the world to
the simple beauty of traditional Irish music." Certainly there are few artists
around today who can make simple beauty look as easy as the Chieftains do.
The BMG/RCA Victor Tears of Stone page
|