Dónal Lunny obituary — SkimNews
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- Dónal Lunny adapted and popularised the bouzouki in Irish traditional music, turning Greece’s round-bodied instrument into a flat-backed one with a shorter neck while playing guitar, keyboards and bodhrán in three influential folk bands.
- Planxty took the Chieftains’ concept of group instrumental playing to a new level by combining different instrumentation with traditional and new songs; Christy Moore later said the band would not have succeeded without Lunny’s “genius and creativity.”
- The Bothy Band fused a rock vibe with traditional pipes, fiddle and flute, while Lunny’s bouzouki and Mícheál Ó Domhnaill’s guitar created its percussive rhythmic sound; Lunny said they “ran out of energy” before the 1979 split.
- Moving Hearts put a rock/jazz drummer, rock guitarist and saxophonist alongside uilleann piper Davy Spillane, using that mix to push Christy Moore’s political songs about Northern Ireland and the hunger strikes; the band split in 1984.
- Common Ground was produced by Lunny for EMI in 1996 and featured him singing mainly Irish traditional songs alongside Bono, Sinéad O’Connor, Elvis Costello and Kate Bush; Bush sang a Gaelic song learned phonetically.
- Bringing It All Back Home was a joint BBC and RTÉ series for which Lunny was musical director in 1991; the series won an Emmy.
- In Time: Dónal Lunny was broadcast by RTÉ in August this year, after Lunny received lifetime achievement awards from BBC Radio 2 in 2018 and RTÉ Radio 1 in 2025.
Why it matters: Christy Moore’s assessment that Planxty would not have succeeded without Lunny makes the cultural loss concrete for Irish folk musicians. Three influential bands, an Emmy-winning 1991 television series and production work with artists including Costello and Bush preserve a legacy whose central contributor has now died.
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