The Balladmaker

“The balladmaker does not seek your approval,” Frank Harte writes in the liner notes to his new album on the songs of 1798. “He does not tailor his song for popular acclaim. “He has simply penned down his thoughts and feelings in his song, and if it finds an ear in which the same chord resonates, then his song will have fulfilled its purpose.”

The 17 songs on 1798: The First Year Of Liberty (Hummingbird Records) tell a story that will send sad chords reverberating through the spirit of any listener, however jaded. Approximately 30,000 insurgents were killed over a period of less than two months – many by such horrific methods as “half hanging”, whereby an individual was hanged until he lost consciousness, then resuscitated and hanged again and again - and the “pitch cap”, which involved a paper cap filled with molten pitch and gunpowder that was jammed onto a man’s head and set alight.

Despite the grim subject matter, however, the CD is a real pleasure to listen to - partly because of Harte’s fine plaintive tenor voice and the affection for the songs that comes through in his singing, and partly because of the sensitive musical backing provided by trad guru Donal Lunny.

“It would have been a completely different record without Donal,” Harte observes over a cup of coffee in the Conrad Hotel. “There are lots of musicians who can accompany a song, but very few of them listen to songs the way Donal listens to songs. He knows what the song has to say, and he tailors the accompaniment to suit the song rather than setting up a rhythm and forcing the singer to accommodate it.”

The two worked together on Harte’s two previous albums, 1988’s Daybreak On A Candle End (re-released on CD last year) and his 1978 recording And Listen To My Song. An architect by profession, Harte has been highly respected in traditional circles for many years - his earliest records were made for the Topic label back in the 1960s - but he has no interest in giving up the day job.

“I prefer singing in a session with a group of singers sitting down, rather than to an audience,” he explains. “It’s a pleasure - you’re meeting the nicest of people under the nicest of circumstances. The idea of performing is alien to me.”

A humourless, fist-shaking purist he’s not, however. Idly leafing through a National Concert Hall brochure, he comes across a leaflet advertising something wincingly entitled Celtic Rhythms, but his reaction is a smile rather than a shudder:

“Some people decry this sort of thing, but I don’t see any harm in it. It’s like the Clancy Brothers awakening people to the fact that there are Irish songs - Riverdance has awakened a whole new group of people to Irish music and dance. It’s not going to affect the set dancers in Connolly’s pub in Mullach.”

Harte hopes to follow the 1798 album up with a series of similar CDs on such topics as the Land League, the Famine and other upheavals in Ireland’s past. “All of Irish history is reflected in our songs,” he remarks, “probably more so than any other nation in Europe. It’s an intrinsic part of the culture.

“Up to the 1960s, most people had no electricity, and there would be a long period from the autumn to the early spring when they would spend these long dark evenings with their neighbours, sitting round an oil lamp and singing and telling stories – but now that’s gone. Electricity has come, and with it has come television, and television is undoubtedly the destroyer of conversation within the home. Children are no longer listening to old people singing, they’re listening to the Teletubbies.

“But again, it also has benefits. Now we can have the best minds in the world discussing any topic in our own kitchens. The youth of this country are the best educated in the world, and they’re coming out of college with a confidence that the earlier generation didn’t have. So, all in all, we’re doing fine.”

• 1798: The First Year Of Liberty is out now on Hummingbird.