Michael (Mick) Moloney (1944–2022) was an internationally acclaimed musician, academic, teacher and social activist and, for much of his life, one of the most influential Irish musicians in the United States.
Born in Limerick, Mick Moloney studied economics in University College Dublin before becoming a major figure in the ballad-group movement of the 1960s, when he joined The Johnstons with fellow musician Paul Brady. Moloney recorded several albums before moving to the United States in 1973, where he pursued graduate studies in the Folklore and Folklife Department of the University of Pennsylvania and earned a doctorate on continuity and change in Irish music in America. Following his appointment to the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, he assembled the Green Fields of America ensemble, which featured an array of the best Irish musicians, dancers and singers living in America, including Michael Flatley, Jean Butler and Eileen Ivers, all of later Riverdance renown. A champion of women musicians at a time when Irish music was dominated by men, he later served as artistic director to Cherish the Ladies, the first all-women’s Irish music ensemble in the world. He was responsible for bringing these and other ensembles of American and Irish-American musicians to Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe and Ireland.
Mick Moloney worked as advisor for several cultural festivals across America and founded the Irish week at the Augusta Centre in West Virginia. A consummate media presenter, performer and consultant, he was music director for the PBS documentaries Out of Ireland (1994) and The Irish in America: Long Journey Home (1998). Throughout a lifetime of arts and culture advocacy, including hundreds of radio interviews and performances, he played a seminal role in the revival of Irish music in America. He was one of only 10 Irish musicians resident in the United States to have received the National Heritage Fellowship Award, presented to him by Hilary Clinton in 1999.
A regular lecturer in ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish studies, Mick Moloney taught at the University of Pennsylvania and was appointed Global Distinguished Professor of Music and Irish Studies at New York University, bringing music into the heart of Irish studies in America in the process. Drawing together decades of performance and research, one of his most iconic publications is the book and recording Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish-American History Through Song (2002). He was particularly interested in the lesser-known and less well-researched connections between Irish American and Jewish music, as well as Irish and African-American music and musicians.
A consummate singer and instrumentalist (guitar, mandolin, banjo), Moloney was named best tenor banjo player in America four times by FRETS magazine, and in 1999, he was named traditionalist of the year by the Irish Echo, the oldest Irish-American newspaper in the US.
In 2013, Moloney received the Presidential Distinguished Services Award from the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, and in 2014, he received a TG4 Gradam Ceoil Award for his outstanding contribution to traditional music.
Mick Moloney had a longstanding relationship with the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at University of Limerick. He shared a passion with the Academy’s founder, Mícheál Ó Suilleabháin, for nurturing emerging musicians and dancers, not only in Irish music but at the points of intersection between Irish and other musics of the world.
Moloney was particularly influential in the development of the Academy’s traditional music programmes, acting as one of the earliest international consultants for the MA in Irish Music Performance programme. Over the years, his relationship with the Academy embraced many roles, including visiting lecturer, performer, consultant, external examiner, external supervisor and, finally, adjunct professor. He played an important part in many performance events at UL, most notably in his curation of the Banjaxed concert in 2007, which featured all the leading Irish banjo players of the day.
Furthermore, Mick Moloney was central to the development of UL’s unique relationship with New York University. In 2003, several Academy colleagues participated in Glucksman Ireland House’s 10th anniversary West Along the Road conference and concert, which was curated by Moloney at Glucksman House and at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. In 2006, he participated in an artistic research collaboration between Tisch School of the Arts in NYU and the Irish World Academy, which contributed to the development of the Arts Practice PhD at UL. His most recent visit as adjunct professor to the Academy further strengthened the creative ties between music, performance studies and Irish studies at UL and NYU.
Mick Moloney’s scholarship and passion for traditional and folk music was matched by a lifelong commitment to social justice. As a young man, he worked with immigrant communities in London, and over the last two decades of his life, he worked in Vietnam, Cuba and Myanmar and in refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border. In these latter years, he divided his time between New York and Thailand, where he volunteered as a music teacher for children with HIV at the Mercy Center in Bangkok. His immense legacy as a musician, educator and social justice activist positions him as a global leader in inclusive music practices, a legacy that continues to grow through his students and creative collaborators around the world.
President, I ask you to confer upon Mick Moloney, posthumously, the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.
Profile photo (originally in colour) by Jeff Meade - Flickr: The headliner, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14704644