{"id":621083,"date":"2026-09-11T05:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621083\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T05:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:08:16","slug":"paddy-keenan-bothy-band-uilleann-piper-dies-aged-76-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/621083\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy Keenan: Bothy Band uilleann piper dies aged 76 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uilleann piper Paddy Keenan, one of the founding members of The Bothy Band<\/a>, has died aged 76.<\/p>\n

Born into a Traveller<\/a> family and raised in Dublin<\/a>, Keenan was the third generation in his family to take up the uilleann pipes.<\/p>\n

Keenan played as part of The Bothy Band, formed in 1975, with musicians including D\u00f3nal Lunny, Matt Molloy, Paddy Glackin, M\u00edche\u00e1l \u00d3 Domhnaill and Tr\u00edona N\u00ed Dhomhnaill, until the their last performance in 1979.<\/p>\n

He had a long career after the The Bothy Band\u2019s 1979 disbandment, both solo and playing with others.<\/p>\n

He was honoured for his contribution to traditional Irish music in 2002 when he received the TG4 Gradam Ceoil Ceolt\u00f3ir na Bliana \u2013 musician of the year \u2013 award. In 2011 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Music Association. <\/p>\n

In 2023, Keenan and his fellow Bothy Band musicians reunited for a documentary, which led to the group playing an Irish tour in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never knew how influential we were until I started travelling around different countries,\u201d Keenan said in an Irish Times interview<\/a> in 2024. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played on all seven continents, and everywhere I went, what I was hearing back was that The Bothy Band was just huge. So now what I\u2019m seeing is that my generation is coming back to see the band, and they have their children and grandchildren coming to the gigs too, which is amazing. It\u2019s crazy. They want to hear what their parents were talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tributes were paid following the announcement of hisKeenan\u2019s death. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn inspirational musician, as a solo artist and a member of the Pavees and The Bothy Band, he drew countless people to the pipes,\u201d Na P\u00edobair\u00ed Uilleann said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaddy\u2019s music was instantly recognisable: his deeply expressive chanter playing coupled with his supreme technique displayed his total mastery of the instrument. A unique musician who both represented the tradition and found his own remarkable voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish Traditional Music Archive described him as \u201cone of the most popular uilleann pipers of all time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The National Concert Hall issued a statement describing Keenan as \u201ca transformative figure in traditional music … often referred to as the \u2018Jimi Hendrix of the uilleann pipes\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uilleann piper Paddy Keenan, one of the founding members of The Bothy Band, has died aged 76. Born…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[20528,93,61,60,263746,263747,42856],"class_list":["post-621083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-donal-lunny","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-paddy-keenan","tag-the-bothy-band","tag-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}