The Chieftains! One of the best bands in the world! They can play anything! They’ve recorded with The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, James Galway, Sting, Sinead O’Connor, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Chet Atkins. They made a whole album with Van Morrison. They’ve scored movies. They’ve done concerts, introduced new young artists, made TV shows, won Grammys. You name it … Paddy Moloney and the gang have done it.
Well, they’ve done it again, and this time they’re featuring Ry Cooder. He’s a Grammy winner too, session musician, solo artist, producer, film composer, and he’s the man responsible for the Buena Vista Social Club. So put them together and what do you get? San Patricio, an album that blends Mexican and Irish music, with a long cast of special guests and a back story of its own.
San Patricio is Spanish for Saint Patrick, and the album is a tribute to the soldiers of the San Patricio battalion, a group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the US Army to fight alongside the Mexicans against the invading Yankees during the Mexican-American War in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s a tale that’s is nearly forgotten. The men were branded as traitors in the US, but in Mexico they are “remembered by generations … to this day as heroes who fought bravely against an unjust and thinly veiled war of agression,” in the words of Paddy Moloney.
Their story is told through a collection of ballads and dance songs both old and new that have roots in the deep musical traditions of both Ireland and Mexico. And the music is presented in a rich recording produced by Moloney and Cooder that features guest appearances by Linda Ronstadt, Liam Neeson, Van Dyke Parks, Lila Downs, Los Tigres Del Norte and Carlos Nunes among others.
The record begins with “La Iguana” sung by Lila Downs, which is enhanced by Paddy’s tin whistle, but throughout the influences go back and forth almost like a tug-of-war — a friendly tug-of-war. The Mexicans and the Irish are introduced to each other. “La Golondrina” follows with a more martial sound, the whistle, the drums, pipes, fiddle, the Irish battalion marches with Los Folkloristas.
Linda Ronstadt takes the lead next, on the romantic La Orilla de Un Palmar. Cooder makes his first appearance here, playing guitar, and Ersi Arvizu sings low harmony. And so it goes. Guests appear, take a solo or a lead vocal, and the Chieftains allow them all the space they need. In all of it, though, the Chieftains never lose their identity, that’s how strong a combo they are.
Cooder’s big solo is on “The Sands of Mexico” which he wrote, and sings, as well as playing guitar, timbales, piano and laúd (the Spanish and Cuban lute). The message is of the trials, integrity and courage of the St. Pat’s soldiers:
Now the army used us harshly, we were but trash to them
Conscripted Irish farmers, not first class soldier men
They beat us and they banged us, mistreated us you know
But they couldn’t make us killers on the sands of MexicoThat’s why we call it faith
That’s why we call Him Lord
That’s why I threw away my Yankee sword
Our John Riley seized the day
And marched us down the road
And we wouldn’t slay our brothers on the sands of Mexico.
Liam Neeson does a dramatic reading over the Chieftains’ music (with Moloney on pipes) on “March to Battle (Across the Rio Grande)”: But when at Churubusco we made our final stand / No court of justice did we have in the land of Uncle Sam / As traitors and deserters all we would be shot or hanged / Far from the green, green shining shores across the Rio Grande.
Cooder makes a return with an instrumental, just him and Van Dyke Parks, but this album belongs to The Chieftains and their guests, all of them. If you had to choose one driving factor it’s the genius of Paddy Moloney and his bandmates who provide the base for what is another in a long line of extraordinary records for the Chieftains.
(Hear Music, 2010)
