The singer Dolores Keane, who has died aged 72, was a founder member of De Dannan, one of the most successful of the Irish traditional music bands that emerged in the 1970s, and especially popular in the US. She later pursued a solo career and sang on A Woman’s Heart, which topped the Irish charts in 1992 and became the highest selling album of Irish music (with 1m copies sold worldwide). Her best-known solo recording, in 1988, was a version of Dougie MacLean’s Scottish ballad Caledonia.
The US singer Nanci Griffith described Dolores as having “a sacred voice … the soul of Ireland”. Her singing was deep, earthy, warm-hearted and expressive, adapting easily from her family-based traditional repertoire to more recently written songs. Her work as a solo singer as well as in De Dannan had a lasting influence on more recent Irish female singers, including Radie Peat of the band Lankum.
