The Clancy Brothers were an influential Irish folk music group that developed initially as a part of the American folk music revival. Most popular during the 1960s, they were famed for their Aran jumpers and are widely credited with popularising Irish traditional music in the United States and revitalising it in Ireland, contributing to an Irish folk boom with groups like the Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the 1960s (left-to-right: Tommy Makem, Paddy Clancy, Tom Clancy and Liam Clancy)
Tommy Makem (group member, 1956–69, 1984–85) playing a bodhrán in 2005, two years before his death
Finbar Furey (backup musician, 1969–70) playing the uilleann pipes in 2012
Robbie O'Connell (group member, 1977–1996) and his cousin, Aoife Clancy, the daughter of Bobby Clancy (group member, 1969–1970, 1977–1998), at the Cape Cod Celtic Festival in 2007
American folk music revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie emerged from the dust bowl of Oklahoma and the Great Depression in the mid-20th century, with lyrics that embraced his views on ecology, poverty, and unionization, paired with melody reflecting the many genres of American folk music.
Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt, honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party marking the opening of a canteen for the United Federal Workers of America, a trade union representing federal employees, in then-segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.
The Kingston Trio in 1958
Woody Guthrie in 1943
