Remembering Frank Harte: "It’s really important that it stays current, and that the songs are sung – for the tradition, and for everybody"

From a young age, Orla Harte recognised that, wherever her father Frank went, “people wanted to listen to him.”

“It wasn’t just the fact that dad could sing,” she reflects. “He had the history behind it, and understood what it was about. He understood why people sang, and why people saved songs.”

June 27th marked 20 years since the death of Frank Harte – a man cited as a vital source of both songs and inspiration by the likes of Lankum, John Francis Flynn, The Mary Wallopers, Christy Moore, Paul Brady, Mick Moloney, Cathy Jordan, Daoirí Farrell, Macdara Yeates, Karan Casey, The Bonny Men, Andy Irvine and countless others.

In the liner notes of his 2005 album Burning Times, Christy Moore describes the Chapelizod-born singer and song collector as not only “a dear friend”, but, “for many of us singers… The National Archive”, noting that “no one in this wide world has anything like the store of songs that Frank possessed.” To this day, he remains a guiding force – with Frank’s recordings, writings and central philosophy on the significance of song continuing to inform the current pulse of the Irish tradition, two decades on.

In the years since his death – of heart failure, aged 72 – that crucial contribution has been recognised with an induction into the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards Hall of Fame, and the establishment of the annual Frank Harte Festival, by An Góilín Traditional Singers Club. But for Orla, one of his four children, it was important to celebrate his legacy in her own way. In 2016, she pieced together When Adam Was In Paradise – the album of love songs her father never got a chance to create during his lifetime.

“Dad had just finished There’s Gangs of Them Digging [released posthumously in 2006] when he passed away,” Orla explains. “And up on the top of his board, he had his next album set up – a list of songs called ‘Love Songs’. So I just decided, ‘Well, if he isn’t going to be able to make it, I will…’

“I contacted quite a few people, just to see who had what,” she continues. “I collected all of the recordings of dad singing love songs, and tried to match it with the list he had on the board. I wasn’t able to get all of them, but luckily I got enough.”

She also reached out to some of her father’s long-time collaborators for the project – including Dónal Lunny, who had featured on six of Frank’s eight previous albums, stretching back to the ‘70s.

“He did all the mixing for me,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him. Dad had the utmost respect for Dónal. Dónal knew how sensitively to work with dad on the songs. Sometimes the music can drown something out – whereas, with Dónal, it always enhanced it.”

The album – which has now received a proper re-release, to coincide with Frank’s 20th anniversary –  includes recordings of some of Orla’s own personal favourites, such as ‘The Bonny Blue Eyed Lassie’, which Frank sang at her wedding. She says her father was also particularly fond of ‘Lambeg Drummer’ – a tale of star-crossed lovers and community division in the North, penned by Bellanaleck singer-songwriter Mickey MacConnell, who passed away earlier this month.

For as long as Orla can remember, she says, Frank would be travelling all around Ireland, “listening to people, and collecting songs.”

“First he had a big reel-to-reel tape recorder, and then he had a smaller one,” she recalls. “And there was constantly music in the house when he’d come back. He’d be taking stuff down, and putting it into his computer system, and then updating that computer system. I think he started on an Apple IIe.

“What dad was doing was really important,” she adds. “All the later albums had an important theme that he wanted to document [from the 1798 Rebellion to the experiences of Irish labourers in England]. I think he wanted to do one on the Irish in America – that would’ve been on his list as well.”

Frank – who was an architect and lecturer by day  – had “so much that he wanted to do,” Orla continues.

“He was never busier than when he retired, and he could get at this full-time,” she says of his music. “But he didn’t sleep much. Three o’clock in the morning, you’d get a phone call from him: ‘Are you awake?’ ‘No!’”

“And because of time differences, he might be on the phone to Christy or Mick Moloney at various times of the day or night,” she adds. “Or, you’d listen to the voicemail, and Christy would be singing a verse of a song – and dad would go, ‘Ah, he’s missing this piece!’ They’d be sending stuff like that back and forth.”

Frank enjoyed sharing his love of songs with the family too.

“We were always singing songs,” Orla tells me. “We had a caravan down the country, and dad would sing his way down, and we’d sing our way back. I think the first one we ever learnt was ‘Henry My Son’ – in everything, somebody died!

“And there were always people in the house singing – but you’d be trying to close the door, so you could watch TV!” she continues. “It’s always just been around. I would’ve been the one who went with dad to all of these concerts and events. He’d ring me up and go, ‘We’ll go into the Góilín. Come pick me up.’ Because he didn’t like to drive!”

Orla’s daughter, Siobhan, is also carrying on Frank’s legacy in her own way.

“She sings a lot of dad’s songs,” says Orla. “She was born 10 months after he passed away – and I think he sent her. We’d have listened to the songs in the car, and she’d have come along with me to the festival every year. In the Góilín, people just stand up and sing – and one of the days, when she was about four-and-a-half, up she got. She stood on top of the table and sang ‘Do You Love An Apple’ – only because there’s some curse words in the middle of it, and she was able to get away with it!

“Every year there’s the festival for dad, and at some point in that weekend, Siobhan will always be singing,” she continues. “She’s sang with Lankum, with Green Fields of America, and with Christy Moore. It’s great, because it keeps it all alive.”

Orla is proud to see how the new generation of Irish folk acts have continued to honour Frank, while also boldly pushing at the boundaries of the tradition – and garnering international attention in the process.

“It’s amazing,” she enthuses. “On dad’s anniversary, the Góilín had a singing session to celebrate it, and there were a lot of young people there. Phenomenal voices, and really strong songs. So it’s alive and well, probably more so than ever.

“People want to know where they come from,” she adds. “I suppose these things are cyclical, but in this day and age, our identity becomes so important. Dad always said: ‘Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.’ The songs are small pieces in time – somebody’s opinion of what’s happening around them, and what’s important to them. And the fact that there are songs that have lasted for over 200 years, about something that happened on a particular day somewhere, is a lovely legacy. It reinforces who we are. It’s really important that it stays current, and that the songs are sung – for the tradition, and for everybody.”

Frank also took a notably non-sectarian stance when it came to collecting songs.

“He always thought the song was as important, whether it came from one side or the other,” Orla elaborates. “He was an Irishman – a republican, I suppose – but all the songs were just as valid, whether it was coming from the ‘orange’ or the ‘green’. He’d record both, and he’d sing both. Because it is part of our tradition.”

That may have been a controversial position at the time, but as Orla points out, crucially, Frank “sang for the love of singing”, as opposed to singing for a living – which meant he was never “playing to a crowd.”

“He was singing what he wanted to sing,” she notes. “If people liked it, they liked it. If they didn’t, they didn’t. He didn’t have to conform to something, and he had more scope.”

Frank Harte

Following the re-release of When Adam Was In Paradise, Orla plans to continue celebrating her father’s legacy, by finally making his extensive collection available to the public.

“The family are now working on getting that together,” she says. “That’s the biggest thing for us right now. All of his collection is there, but it’s how you get it into a format that people can access is the tricky thing.

“Dad had a lot more to do, and obviously he didn’t get time to do it,” she continues. “He was never going to be finished – it was always a race for him, as to how much he could get done. But I think the recordings in his collection will provide so much for people. Recordings that maybe nobody else has heard, and recordings of people that are long since dead. It’s important that they get into a place where people can access them.”

When Adam Was In Paradise is out now. The 2025 Frank Harte Festival takes place at The Teachers’ Club in Dublin, September 26-28.

Read Ian Lynch of Lankum's reflections on the influence of Frank Harte here.