Chieftains Stick to Irish Music Tradition : Band: Ireland’s most famous traditional band plays with top popular artists but never strays from Irish music.

“As Susannah York put it, ‘Irish music gets you right in the gut!’ ”

Paddy Moloney, his shillelagh-thick brogue crackling over the telephone line from his hotel room in New York, had landed one of his patented combinations. An unabashed shill for Irish music, the puckish leader of Ireland’s most popular traditional band, the Chieftains, had simultaneously made a sales pitch and invoked a well-known British actress.

Moloney was working two fronts: The Chieftains had recently released their 24th album, “The Bells of Dublin,” and they were bound for San Diego, where they will perform a holiday concert Tuesday night at Copley Symphony Hall.

Besides, such name-dropping is almost unavoidable for Moloney. Sure, one could credit constant touring and rabid press notices with making Moloney (Uilleann pipes, tin whistle), Derek Bell (harp, tiompan, harpsichord), Martin Fay and Sean Keane (fiddles), Kevin Conneff (bodhran) and Matt Malloy (flute) a major force in the world music. But the Gaelic posse’s fame also is attributable to unsolicited proselytizing by scores of public figures.

Popes, kings, intellectuals and jet-setters sing the group’s praises. Musicians of every stripe rush to record with them, including an “A” list of guest artists who contributed to “The Bells of Dublin”--an album of traditional and new Christmas songs, portions of which will be performed in Tuesday’s program.

Ironically, this circle of celebrity has formed around blokes who are much more comfortable raising pints in a neighborhood pub than quaffing Champagne at a gala. Nevertheless, after almost three decades in the spotlight, Moloney’s salt-of-the-earth schmooziness is perfumed with glamorous references.

“ ‘The Bells of Dublin’ project started a year and a half ago when we were finishing a festival in Los Angeles. I was introduced to Paul Anka, and over a few jars and a few hours,” Moloney said, laughing, “we talked about doing something musical together. Now, Paul does Christmas shows, and we decided to have a crack at it, but it sort of didn’t happen.

“Still, I didn’t want to let the idea die,” he continued. “I decided to make a Christmas album, but there aren’t a huge number of what you could call Irish Christmas carols. So, I asked some friends to provide some tunes, and I’d give them the Chieftains treatment. We started recording it months ago, and had a helluva good time. You can imagine ‘Jingle Bells’ in the middle of May!”

Those “friends” included Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull, Nanci Griffith, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and Burgess Meredith. Moloney lavished praise on them all, but seemed especially fascinated with Costello, who collaborated with Moloney on a new song.

“Elvis, of course, is like the James Joyce of Dublin,” Moloney offered. “He even looks like him! An absolutely superb character! But I didn’t know where he was coming from with this song, ‘St. Stephen’s Day Murders,’ which he kept playing for me before it was finished.

“Of course, it has nothing to do with murder,” Moloney assured, “and more to do with an old Irish figure of speech. For instance, when there’s been a bit of a disagreement at somebody’s party, one might say, ‘God, there was murder at so-and-so’s house the other night!’ Still, it took me a while to come up with a piece of music that suited the idea.”

Moloney needn’t have fretted. “The Bells of Dublin” is a marvelous recording that simultaneously spans time, international borders, and secular and spiritual concerns. In trussing ancient Celtic, French Canadian, British Renaissance, and other musical styles with Gaelic filigree, the album underscores the universality of Irish music--its flinty, earthy appeal, the irresistible gaiety of its dance tunes and the power of its melancholy melodies to summon long-repressed emotions.

“We just finished a tour of England, Scotland, and Wales, and naturally we were a big hit,” he said. “But it’s the same everywhere. I’m sure the Italians and the Japanese don’t understand a single word I’m saying, but they respond to the melodies and the emotion in a big way. In September, we played Japan, and at the end of each concert everyone in the auditorium rose to their feet and started dancing. I couldn’t believe it! Spontaneously--bang!--up they went. And Japanese audiences are usually very reserved.”

If Moloney has a special insight into Irish music’s effects, he also has a firm grasp of its historical roots.

“You can understand that for hundreds of years, with the terrible poverty and political strife and all, making music has been the greatest source of self-entertainment for the Irish people. And we never lost the poetry and the story-telling, in spite of the occupation of our country by our neighbors, and the little argument we’ve been having with them for a while,” he said with a devious chuckle.

“In fact, the Irish used to write songs with both Irish and English lyrics, and they’d sing them at parties when the opposition was there, if you know what I mean. One verse would be praising the British soldiers, and the next verse would be in Irish and would be making fools of them, and the British never understood why everyone would suddenly be laughing.”

Cooperative projects like “The Bells of Dublin” have broadened the Chieftains’ audience to include many followers of pop and rock. One wondered if Moloney, in turn, had begun listening to more of the music made by his counterparts in those fields.

“I suppose I should say yes, but I really haven’t!” he replied, with a self-conscious chortle. “We’re still very much a traditional band, and we would never depart from our forte, which is good ol’ Irish music. It would just be wrong. Our working with pop artists is a result of people asking us to do something, like the solo album I worked on with Mick Jagger.

“In fact, the first time that ever happened was in 1972--and here’s a bit of a name-drop for you--when Paul McCartney asked me to become involved in a project he was doing with his brother Mike.”

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, Moloney would work with other pop artists, including Mike Oldfield, Art Garfunkel, Van Morrison and Don Henley. He also composed several film scores, a compilation of which has been released on an album called “Reel Music.” Last month, Moloney completed work on the score to a docudrama about filmmaker John Boorman.

A couple of weeks ago, Moloney was in London as a special guest--with Lou Reed, John Martyn and Pink Floyd--at England’s biggest awards show. The Chieftains shared the highest accolade, a four-star award, with Madonna and others. Currently, the band is working on a Celtic arrangement of a tune with singer-songwriter Chris DeBurgh, and Moloney soon will join Faithfull and The Who’s Roger Daltrey in a benefit for Amnesty International.

Yet, for all that activity, concertizing remains the Chieftains’ scones and butter. While Tuesday’s program is holiday-oriented and promises some surprises, Moloney hastens to add that longtime fans will get what they come for as well.

“In our show in San Diego, we’re going to have dancers disguised in straw hats and painted faces,” he explained. “It’s a traditional observance of St. Stephen’s Day. Townsfolk in disguises would go around calling on people, and if you were foolish enough to let them in, they’d dance and sing. In return, you’d give them some Christmas cake and plum pudding, maybe a bottle of stout--or you’d kick them out! Today, of course, people use the observance to collect money for charity.

“So, we’ll give the audience a taste of what’s on the Christmas album, including a choir singing the odd carol, but at the same time it’ll be a true Chieftains concert. Our Irish fans in San Diego would kill us if it wasn’t!”