Frank Harte

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Frank Harte (1934-2005) was born and lived in Chapelizod, a small village on the banks of the river Liffey, Dublin, Ireland. He worked as an architect professionally, but is honoured now as one of the greatest balladeers and song collectors in the Irish musical tradition.

His introduction to Irish singing came, he said, from a chance listening to an itinerant who was selling ballad sheets at a fair in Boyle, County Roscommon. He became a great exponent of the Dublin street ballad, which he preferred to sing unaccompanied. He was widely known for his singing - his Dublin accent was laced with a rich nasal quality - and also as a collector of songs and the stories behind them. He assembled a database of over 15,500 recordings. He began collecting early in life. He remembers buying ballads from a man who sold them by the sheet at the side of the Adelphi Cinema.

He once wrote about his song collecting: "I have been gathering songs around the country for a good number of years now, and seldom have I come across singers who are unwilling to part with their songs. Probably they realise as I do, that the songs do not belong to them, just as they did not belong to the people they got them from." (Harte, Frank (1978). Songs of Dublin. Gilbert Dalton). To augment the point on another occasion he quoted the poet Brendan Kennelly:

All songs are living ghosts

And long for a living voice

Proud of his musical heritage he believed that this need not be a sectarian or nationalist preserve: "The Orange song is just as valid an expression as the Fenian." He liked to sing out of his love for a song than a desire to please an audience: "A traditional singer is not singing for a commercial audience so he doesn't have to please an audience."

He recorded several albums and made numerous television and radio appearances. He was a regular at the Sunday morning sessions in The Brazen Head pub along with the late Liam Weldon. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of An Góilín Singers Club. A regular at singers' sessions in Ireland, he appeared at clubs, seminars and festivals in France, Britain and America where he was in demand as a teacher.

In September 2006 the first Frank Harte Festival was organised and held in Dublin by An Góilín.