Frank Harte
Encyclopedia
Frank Harte was a traditional Irish singer
Traditional Irish Singers
Some of the traditional Irish singers alphabetically listed below are known to have sung in both the Irish and English language and if so are listed in both sections below as well known singers of macaronic Irish songs.-Mainly English language songs:...

, song collector, architect and lecturer. He was born and raised in Dublin. His father Peter Harte who had moved from a farming background in Sligo owned 'The Tap' pub in Chapelizod. Frank emigrated to the United States for a short period, but later returned to Ireland where he worked as an architect, lecturer at DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology
Dublin Institute of Technology
Dublin Institute of Technology was established officially in 1992 under the but had been previously set up in 1978 on an ad-hoc basis. The institution can trace its origins back to 1887 with the establishment of various technical institutions in Dublin, Ireland...

) in Rathmines, Dublin and in later life fully engaged in songs in many ways.

Singing

Frank Harte's introduction to Irish traditional singing came, he said, from a chance listening to an itinerant who was selling ballad sheets at a fair in Boyle, County Roscommon
Boyle, County Roscommon
Boyle is a town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located at the foot of the Curlew Mountains near Lough Key in the north of the county. Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery, the Drumanone Dolmen and the popular fishing lakes of Lough Arrow and Lough Gara are also close by...

.
Frank became a great exponent of the Dublin street ballad, which he preferred to sing unaccompanied.
He was widely known for his distinctive singing, his Dublin accent having a rich nasal quality complimenting his often high register. His voice mellowed considerably by the time of his later recordings, allowing for an expressive interpretation of many love songs such as 'My Bonny Light Horseman' on the album 'My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte'. This is contrasted sublimely by Frank's cogent interpretation of the popular 'Molly Malone'. He also became more accustomed to singing with accompaniment which is not strictly part of the Irish singing tradition and did not come naturally to him.

Though Irish Republican in his politics, he believed that the Irish song tradition need not be a sectarian or nationalist preserve: "The Orange song is just as valid an expression as the Fenian". He believed that songs were a key to understanding the past often saying :"those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs, and, given our history, we have an awful lot of songs.". Though considered a stalwart of traditional Irish singing and well aware of it, Frank did not consider himself to be a sean-nós
Sean-nós song
Sean-nós is a highly ornamented style of unaccompanied traditional Irish singing. It is a sean-nós activity, which also includes sean-nós dancing...

 singer.

He claimed he liked to sing out of his love for a song rather 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." His repertoire included, amongst many others, songs of the 1798 rebellion, Napoleonic ballads and the street ballads of Zozimus. As well as traditional songs, he also sang numerous music hall songs such 'The Charladies' Ball' and 'Biddy Mulligan' as popularised by Jimmy O'Dea
Jimmy O'Dea
James Augustine "Jimmy" O'Dea was an Irish actor and comedian.-Life:Jimmy O'Dea was born in Lower Bridge Street, Dublin, where his mother kept a small toy-shop. He was one of 11 children. His father was an iron-monger and had a shop in Capel Street. He was educated at Blackrock College and...

.

Frank won the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil singing competition on a number of occasions and in 2003, he received the Traditional Singer of the Year award from the Irish-language television channel TG4
TG4
TG4 is a public service broadcaster for Irish language speakers. The channel has been on-air since 31 October 1996 in the Republic of Ireland and since April 2005 in Northern Ireland....

.

Song Collecting

Frank began collecting early in life and he remembered buying ballads from a man who sold them by the sheet at the side of the Adelphi Cinema and by the end of his life had assembled a database of over 15,500 recordings.

As a young man, Frank encountered many songs in his father's pub, 'The Tap', in Chapelizod saying:
"It was a great mixture of people in Chapelizod - Catholics and Protestants. There was also a fair few of the old crowd knocking around - the Dublin Fusiliers who had come back from the First World War and they all had their input too. They had these songs about soldiers going away to war and leaving the sweetheart behind and they were all tearjerkers. I would also hear a lot of the old music-hall songs and Victorian melodrama songs such as She Was Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage or . . . things that would tear your heart out, bring tears to your eyes."


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."


This was a philosophy that Frank went on to espouse greatly himself, having given countless songs and encouragement to singers in Ireland and abroad for over fifty years. Recipients of songs and information about them include Christy Moore
Christy Moore
Christopher Andrew "Christy" Moore is a popular Irish folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is well known as one of the founding members of Planxty and Moving Hearts...

, Andy Irvine
Andy Irvine (musician)
Andrew Kennedy 'Andy' Irvine is a folk musician, singer, and songwriter, and a founding member of the popular band Planxty. He is an accomplished player of the mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, guitar-bouzouki, harmonica and hurdy-gurdy....

, Karan Casey
Karan Casey
Karan Casey is an Irish folk singer, and a former member of the Irish band Solas.-Early years:Casey was born in Ballyduff Lower, Kilmeaden, County Waterford, Ireland. Her family encouraged her to sing in the house, in a church choir and at school. At Waterford Regional Technical College she...

, The Voice Squad
The Voice Squad
The Voice Squad are a traditional Irish singing group from Ireland. The members include Gerry Cullen, Phil Callery and Fran McPhail. They have recorded two albums and have toured Ireland, the UK and the US....

, and musicians alike.

Despite his extensive collecting, he firmly believed that songs only existed when sung and to augment the point, he often quoted the poem 'Living Ghosts' by Brendan Kennelly
Brendan Kennelly
Brendan Kennelly is a popular Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. He is now retired and occasionally tours the USA as university lecturer.-Early life:...

:
All songs are living ghosts
And long for a living voice


Frank is referred to by members of Planxty
Planxty
Planxty is an Irish folk music band formed in the 1970s, consisting initially of Christy Moore , Dónal Lunny , Andy Irvine , and Liam O'Flynn...

 in the biography of the band by Leagues O'Toole, 'The Humours of Planxty' as a source of songs.
"The Little Drummer" was a song passed on by the late, great Dublin singer and collector, Frank Harte. 'He is perhaps the single most important collector of songs,' says Christy
Christy Moore
Christopher Andrew "Christy" Moore is a popular Irish folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is well known as one of the founding members of Planxty and Moving Hearts...

.

'I remember Christy and myself going up to Frank Harte for songs,' adds Andy
Andy Irvine (musician)
Andrew Kennedy 'Andy' Irvine is a folk musician, singer, and songwriter, and a founding member of the popular band Planxty. He is an accomplished player of the mandolin, bouzouki, mandola, guitar-bouzouki, harmonica and hurdy-gurdy....

. 'I'd known Frank since very early in my career. He was an architect living in Chapelizod and I first met him in about 1963. He was always slightly to one side. It would be Johnny Moynihan
Johnny Moynihan
John "Johnny" Moynihan , is a folk singer based in Dublin, Ireland. He is often credited as being responsible for introducing the bouzouki and the Irish bouzouki into Irish music in the mid 1960s. Known as "The Bard of Dalymount", as a young man he played in the band Sweeney's Men with Andy Irvine,...

 and myself and our clique, and Ronnie Drew
Ronnie Drew
Joseph Ronald "Ronnie" Drew was an Irish singer and folk musician who achieved international fame during a fifty-year career recording with The Dubliners. He was born in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin...

 and The Dubliners
The Dubliners
The Dubliners are an Irish folk band founded in 1962.-Formation and history:The Dubliners, initially known as "The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group", formed in 1962 and made a name for themselves playing regularly in O'Donoghue's Pub in Dublin...

, all more or less of the same age, and Frank was probably seven or eight years older than I was. I liked him a lot.'

Recordings

Frank recorded several albums and made numerous television and radio appearances, most nobably the Singing Voices series he wrote and presented for RTÉ
Raidió Teilifís Éireann
Raidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on January 1, 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on December 31, 1961, making...

 Radio, which was produced by Peter Browne in 1987. Frank's first two LPs, though released with six years between them, were recorded in one session in England by Bill Leader
Bill Leader
Bill Leader is an English recording engineer and record producer. He is particularly associated with the British folk music revival of the 1960s and 1970s, producing records by Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Frank Harte and others....

 with concertina accompaniment on some songs by Alf Edwards. From 1998 he recorded four albums for the Hummingbird record label on which he was accompanied by Donal Lunny
Dónal Lunny
Dónal Lunny is an Irish folk musician. Lunny has been at the forefront of the evolution of traditional Irish music for more than thirty-five years and has participated within the renaissance of traditional Irish music in that time period...

 on bazouki and guitar. These last four albums covered the huge topics of the 1798 Rebellion, the Great Irish Famine, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Irish navvies abroad. Each album is characteristically accompanied by comprehensive liner notes of meticulous research into each song and the subject in question, though his accuracy and impartiality as a historian is not as unanimously praised as his singing. In 2004, Frank's first two albums were re-released on CD, though the first track of his first album 'Traveller All Over The World' was omitted.

Performance

Frank was a regular at the Sunday morning sessions at The Brazen Head pub, along with the late Liam Weldon
Liam Weldon
Liam Weldon was a singer and songwriter in the Irish folk tradition.-Life:Born in Dublin, Ireland, Liam, like many people in inner city Dublin at that time, was moved out of the developing city to Ballyfermot, a suburb on the outskirts of the city.Liam had a lifelong interest in the songs of the...

 who ran the session. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of An Góilín
An Góilín
An Góilín Traditional Singer's Club is a traditional singing club in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1979 by Dónal de Barra and his brother-in-law, Tim Dennehy, the club serves as a meeting place for those who want to sing and listen to traditional songs...

 Traditional Singer's Club. A regular at singers' sessions in Ireland, he appeared at clubs, seminars and festivals in France, Britain and America as well as touring the festivals at Fleadhanna in Ireland. Frank also performed in London in Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...

 and Peggy Seeger
Peggy Seeger
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...

's 'Singers Club' in 1971 and at the on two occasions.

"Harte felt that the traditional singer, unlike the latter type of vocalist, had absolutely no responsibility to entertain or please the crowd that might be listening, because the singer's real purpose is simply to perform the song, the act of the performance being a justification in itself."

He appeared at many American festivals including The Blarney Star in New York, Gaelic Roots in Boston College, The Catskills Irish Arts Week, The Greater Washington Ceili Club
Festival in Maryland and Irish Fest in Milwaukee and for seventeen years he was a veritable staple at the Irish Week every July in the Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia where he often performed with Mick Moloney
Mick Moloney
Michael "Mick" Moloney is a traditional Irish musician and scholar. Born in Limerick, County Limerick, he was an important figure on the Dublin folk-song revival in the 1960s. In 1973, he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

. He was also in demand as a teacher and gave many talks about traditional song including a lecture entitled "My name is Napoleon Bonaparte - the significance of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Irish Song Tradition" at the Willy Clancy Summer school on the 12th July, 2001.

Legacy

Frank Harte died of a heart attack, aged 72, on the 27th of June, 2005 and is survived by his wife Stella (née Maguire), daughters, Sinead and Orla, and his sons Darragh and Cian. His influence is still evident in singers such as Karan Casey. Frank continues to be remembered fondly in sessions and folk clubs on both sides of the Irish sea.

At the 2005 Whitby Folk Week a tribute to Frank Harte entitled "Through Streets Broad and Narrow" was held at the
Resolution Hotel Function Room, on Monday August 22, 2005 at 6:00pm. It featured Ken Hall and Peta Webb, Jim McFarland, Niamh Parsons, Jerry O'Reilly, Jim Mageean, George Unthank, Alan Fitzsimons, Pete Wood, Grace Toland, Brian Doyle, Patricia Flynn, Geordie McIntyre and Alison MacMoreland, The Wilsons, Eamonn O'Broithe, Roisin White, Bruce Scott, Rosie Stewart and others.

In September 2006, the first Frank Harte Festival was organised and held in Dublin by Jerry O'Reilly and other members of An Góilín Traditional Singer's Club. The second and third festivals were held in September 2007 and 2008, again organised by An Góilín, and the festival is intended to be an annual event taking place on the last weekend of September each year.

In May 2008, the third Frank Harte Memorial Prize was given at the Dublin Institute of Technology
Dublin Institute of Technology
Dublin Institute of Technology was established officially in 1992 under the but had been previously set up in 1978 on an ad-hoc basis. The institution can trace its origins back to 1887 with the establishment of various technical institutions in Dublin, Ireland...

, Bolton Street, in association with the DIT faculty of the built environment, RTÉ and the Teachers' Union of Ireland. The prize is awarded to students in their second year of their studies in Construction Technology and Design.

Discography

  • Dublin Street Songs
    Dublin Street Songs / Through Dublin City
    Dublin Street Songs and Through Dublin City are LPs of mostly traditional Irish songs by Frank Harte. Dublin Street Songs became Frank Harte's first LP recording in 1967, having been recorded in two days earlier that year by Bill Leader in England at the same time as the tracks that were to become...

    , Topic, 1967
  • Through Dublin City
    Dublin Street Songs / Through Dublin City
    Dublin Street Songs and Through Dublin City are LPs of mostly traditional Irish songs by Frank Harte. Dublin Street Songs became Frank Harte's first LP recording in 1967, having been recorded in two days earlier that year by Bill Leader in England at the same time as the tracks that were to become...

    , Topic, 1973
  • And Listen To My Song
    And Listen To My Song
    For 'And Listen to My Song' the memorial documentary made about Frank Harte by Peter Browne for RTÉ Radio, see And Listen To My Song is the third LP released by traditional Irish singer Frank Harte. It was the first of many albums recorded with Donal Lunny as accompanist and the first of Frank's...

    , 1976
  • Daybreak And A Candle-End, 1987
  • 1798 - The First Year Of Liberty
    1798 - The First Year Of Liberty
    1798 – The First Year Of Liberty is an album of traditional Irish songs relating to the 1798 rebellion by the United Irishmen. All songs are sung by Frank Harte and some are accompanied on bouzouki, guitar and occasional bodhrán by Donal Lunny....

    , Hummingbird 1998
  • My Name Is Napoleon Bonaparte: Traditional Songs On Napoleon Bonaparte, Hummingbird 2001
  • The Hungry Voice: The Song Legacy Of Ireland's Great Hunger,Hummingbird 2004
  • Dublin Street Songs / Through Dublin City
    Dublin Street Songs / Through Dublin City
    Dublin Street Songs and Through Dublin City are LPs of mostly traditional Irish songs by Frank Harte. Dublin Street Songs became Frank Harte's first LP recording in 1967, having been recorded in two days earlier that year by Bill Leader in England at the same time as the tracks that were to become...

    , Hummingbird 2004 (first two albums reissued on combined CD)
  • There's Gangs Of Them Digging: Songs Of Irish Labour, Hummingbird 2007


Frank also appears on many other compilations, including:
  • 'Top of the Morning', Pickwick: Dublin, 1979, singing 'Biddy Mulligan'
  • 'Irish Folk Favourites', Harp/Pickwick, 1990, singing 'Dicey Reilly'
  • 'Irish Voices', Topic: London, 1996, singing 'The Traveller All Over the World'
  • 'Irish Songs From Old New England', Folk Legacy: USA, 2003, singing 'Napoleon's Defeat'

Broadcast

  • 'Singing Voices', five part series for RTÉ Radio 1 first broadcast in May 1987 each on a different aspect of the Irish singing tradition.
  • Appearance on 'Come West Along the Road' series one singing 'Napoleon Bonaparte' originally from the RTÉ series 'Fonn'
  • Main subject of the television documentary 'Se Mo Laoch - Frank Harte' for TG4, directed by Philip King
  • Main subject of the memorial radio documentary 'And Listen to my Song' by Peter Browne (Irish musician) for RTÉ Radio. Listen to it here.
  • Main subject of a radio documentary called 'Frank Harte Remembered' by Mick Moloney on RTÉ Radio a year after his death. Listen to it here.

See also

  • List of Irish music collectors
  • Traditional Irish Singers
    Traditional Irish Singers
    Some of the traditional Irish singers alphabetically listed below are known to have sung in both the Irish and English language and if so are listed in both sections below as well known singers of macaronic Irish songs.-Mainly English language songs:...

  • An Góilín
    An Góilín
    An Góilín Traditional Singer's Club is a traditional singing club in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1979 by Dónal de Barra and his brother-in-law, Tim Dennehy, the club serves as a meeting place for those who want to sing and listen to traditional songs...

  • Sean Nós
    Sean-nós song
    Sean-nós is a highly ornamented style of unaccompanied traditional Irish singing. It is a sean-nós activity, which also includes sean-nós dancing...


Obituaries

  • O’Reilly, Jerry, ‘Frank Harte (1933–2005)’, Folk Music Journal: The Journal of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
    Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
    The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society , located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House...

    vol. 9, no 3 (2008), pp. 479–80
  • Ní Fhloinn, Bairbre, ‘In Memoriam. Frank Harte – Singer and Song-Collector 1933-2005’ in Béaloideas vol. 74 (2006), pp. 236–8
  • Independent, The (London), Jul 1, 2005 by P. J. Gillan http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050701/ai_n14688343

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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