The Pride Piper of Dublin : Paddy Moloney Has Led His Band of Chieftains to Far Corners in Praise of Irish Music : Christmas With the Lads : Sure It’s a Wee Bit Early for a Holiday, but the Chieftains Are Always in Season

If the United Nations had any real sense, it would stop shipping troops off to the world’s trouble spots and just send in the Chieftains.

Odds are that inside of an hour, Ireland’s premier traditional music group would have opposing factions jamming instead of warring.

Time after time, the venerated group has demonstrated uncanny skill at finding a joyous common ground with whomever it meets, wherever it travels.

On a recent trip to Japan, the sextet was greeted by a throng of teen-age girls playing an Irish march they’d learned on tin whistles. Returning the honor, the band Chieftain-ized a couple of Japanese folk tunes.

On a 1983 tour of China that produced an album and full-length video, they collaborated with local folk musicians to create songs that miraculously managed to sound thoroughly Irish and thoroughly Chinese--simultaneously.

The Chieftains brought 200-plus-year-old Celtic folk tunes to such palaces of high culture as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Carnegie Hall in New York and Boston’s Symphony Hall for performances earlier this year with the Belfast Harp Orchestra.

They’ve played for Queen Elizabeth II and the Pope, yet still found time to spend “a great hoolie” of a night in the studio with the Rolling Stones, recording a pair of tracks with rock’s bad boys for the next Chieftains album.

But after more than 30 years and 30 albums with the group, chief Chieftain Paddy Moloney doesn’t spend a lot of time mulling over glories past. Like an Indy 500 driver, Moloney is too busy pushing ever forward to look over his shoulder for more than an instant at a time.

“We’ve struck a new deal with our record company; things seem to be climbing and climbing after the success of the Grammys,” Moloney said by phone from his home in Dublin recently, referring to the Chieftains’ double win--for best traditional- and contemporary-folk albums--at this year’s Grammy ceremony.

“I have another five or six projects in mind, and with the renewal of our contract (with RCA Victor), I’ve become very serious about them,” he said. “I think we have some very interesting things in store for the future.”

Along with Moloney, the Uilleann (elbow) pipes and tin whistle player who formed the band in 1962, the Chieftains’ lineup for the last decade has included flutist Matt Molloy, harpist Derek Bell, fiddlers Martin Fay and Sean Keane, and singer- bodhran player Kevin Conneff.

Although that’s just six players, the group has tapped a seemingly endless series of fresh instrumental textures and concepts. Yet over three decades, no matter where or with whom the Chieftains play, somehow they always manage to sound like the Chieftains.

Moloney expects that rule to hold for the band’s forthcoming album with the Stones, Mark Knopfler, Tom Jones, and St. Patrick knows what other guests. (Moloney won’t name names “until I have them in the studio and on tape.”) Tentatively titled “The Chieftains and Friends,” it will feature many artists who have enlisted one or more Chieftains to play on their albums.

It’s only the latest in a series of sometimes predictable, usually unexpected pairings the group has been part of over the years:

* They wedded Celtic soul to traditional Irish folk in 1987, with “Irish Heartbeat,” a project with their countryman Van Morrison.

* David Copperfield may boast about making the Statue of Liberty disappear, but the Chieftains effectively made the Atlantic Ocean vanish on last year’s Grammy-winning “Another Country” album, a series of duets recorded in Nashville. Featuring Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, Don Williams and others, the album included the Chieftains and Ricky Skaggs taking country music’s venerable “Wabash Cannonball” on a breakneck detour through the heart of the Emerald Isle.

* They dug several centuries back into Irish musical history on their latest album, “Celtic Harp--A Tribute to the Edward Bunting Collection,” a collaboration with the Belfast Harp Orchestra.

What is it about this band that has earned not just the respect, but also the in-studio participation of musicians from virtually every field, in virtually every country they visit?

“It’s not just a band anymore,” surmised Moloney. “It’s really become an institution, and people want to find out about this institution. They always say ‘Oh, we’d love to play with the Chieftains.’ At the end of the day (of recording), I’m not sure they’d still want to do it. But I don’t muck about. I just get them in the studio and do it.

“They’ve all had a good time with us, though,” he said, then paused, laughing: “At least I think they did. I never went back to ask them.”

That’s because this band never really slows down; the members simply stop for a quick pint in Dublin between recording sessions and international jaunts.

Its current tour brings the group to Orange County on Monday for a “Christmas in Ireland” concert.

The program is scheduled to include--the qualifier is used because no two Chieftains performances are ever identical--Celtic music such as “The Wexford Carol” as well as carols popular in the United States. Joining in will be the San Francisco-based Patricia Kennelly dancers, who will take the place of “the wren boys” in helping the Chieftains re-enact an Irish Christmas tradition.

“The wren boys, or straw boys, would dress in straw and blacken their faces and come and knock on your door,” Moloney explained. “If you were foolish enough to open up, they’d come in and create an awful ruckus, perhaps do a dance on your kitchen floor. The only way to get rid of them was to give them plum pudding or a bottle of stout or a few shillings. It was really a way to collect money to give to the poor.”

The Kennelly dancers will take the place of the wren boys and venture into the audience, although Moloney doesn’t expect them to return with either pudding or stout (“I don’t allow drink on stage,” he added quickly).

Though the group’s performances are essentially parties that are open to the public, there’s serious intent beneath the fun.

“When we started on our mission 31 years ago, my great dream was of this music remaining alive,” Moloney said. “One of the goals was for people outside Ireland to know that there is a great classical tradition of music here and that it’s very important. I wanted people to know there’s more to Irish music than ‘Did Your Mother Come From Ireland’ and ‘Mother Machree.’ . . . “It has been described in old manuscripts as the greatest classical folk music in the world,” he said. “I wouldn’t go that far, because I have the utmost respect for the folk music of every country.

“But there’s been some misunderstanding in the past about what we do, and when some people have said the Chieftains are trying to be a bit ‘classical,’ I wonder what they mean,” he said. “What we’re doing is actually the purest form of traditional music.”

Even Moloney has to scratch his head for a minute before offering his explanation of why these six lads from the land of Joyce and Guinness have managed such longevity and near-universal acclaim.

“There’s been a lot of hard work and perseverance, (but) I must say we’ve had some great luck on our side as well,” he said. “In this band, there are six individuals who are superb soloists in their own right. This kind of a band wouldn’t happen with session musicians; we have six great personalities in the group.

“We also have on our side this music that is so strong melodically, so varied. . . . It has so much to pull on and so much variety for people to listen to.”