This weekend Dublin's traditional singers remember the man who brought them in from the cold, writes Siobhán Long

"Those in power write the history,
those who suffer write the songs"
- Frank Harte

Luke Cheevers sits in Hughes' snug, a place that's no stranger to the late night session, and taps his bearded chin in contemplation. A long-time member of Dublin's An Góilín Traditional Singers' Club, he carries a gargantuan store of songs in his head, their intricate word-play embedded in his memory, to be accessed at a second's notice to illustrate a point, or mirror a conversation theme - or simply to entertain.

"A good song might lie down - but it'll never die," he declares, with biblical certainty. Cheevers occupies one link in a chain of spirited Dublin singers that stretches from Kathleen, Dominic and Brendan Behan to Luke Kelly and Liam Weldon. They sang often ferocious songs of love's labour lost, of the social gatherings of char ladies, of victories and defeats - large and small - and of matters of current import, such as the price of a pint, or the intricacies of waking the not-quite-dead.

Frank Harte, song collector, singer, and architect of both buildings and song repertoires, championed Ireland's songs and stories like nobody else. His untimely death last year left singers from Christy Moore to Karan Casey and Róisín Gaffney, reeling. It was to Frank that they all turned whenever they sought a song or a stray lyric. It was Frank's lightness of touch, too, that lured Dónal Lunny to his side, meticulously gathering a galleon of Frank's beloved Napoleonic songs and recording them on a double CD, My Name Is Napoleon Bonaparte.

Jerry O'Reilly, Luke Cheevers and Róisín Gaffney have been busily organising the first Frank Harte Festival, which will take place in Dublin this weekend. O'Reilly is An Góilín's public face; his irascible smile and ready humour a fixture at their weekly sessions in Tom Maye's pub on Dorset Street.

"After Frank died, we wanted to find a fitting way to commemorate Frank himself, and his legacy," O'Reilly says. "Frank gave a huge legitimacy to Dublin singers, which previously had been missing. I remember singing in fleadhanna, as did Frank, back in the 1970s, and we weren't taken seriously because we didn't come from a 'rural' background."

This town-and-country phenomenon is well embedded in the cliched presumptions many of us still make when it comes to traditional singing. Connemara and west Kerry spring to mind as soon as mention is made of singing, but somehow or another, Dublin singers were often not quite seen as "traditional". They occupied that nether region where music hall ballads and street singing collided.

Frank Harte's inveterate championing of Dublin's rich song tapestry finally led to Dublin singers and songs being invited in from the cold. "Frank loved listening to other singers," O'Reilly says. "If he heard a good song, he'd want the words."

O'Reilly is quick to dismiss the elevation of so-called "traditional" songs to heights unreachable by other song types. "People mightn't know that, for example, one of [the late Ballyvourney singer] Elizabeth Cronin's best loved songs, The Good Ship Kangaroo, was written by Harry Clifden in 1845. He was a music hall performer. Many of us thought that song was a quintessential 'traditional' song, but it wasn't really, at least in the strictest sense."

Luke Cheevers rises to a gallop, his vigorous conversational style becoming even more animated as he unpeels the layers of history in songs that many know by heart. "Harry O'Donovan wrote songs for Jimmy O'Dea and Maureen Potter," he declares, "and used traditional airs, about the people of Dublin: The Ragman's Ball, Biddy Mulligan and so on. Certainly Frank Harte made no distinction between the great Dublin songs of the music hall era and traditional songs from Donegal or Clare. Likewise, he had great affection for American music hall songs and Tin Pan Alley songs. He knew a good song was a good song, no matter where it came from."

Róisín Gaffney, although originally from Mullingar, is a stalwart of the Góilín Club, and has a particular affection for Dublin songs. "Dublin singers didn't take themselves too seriously," she says, "and that might have distinguished them from country singers as well. Songs like Three Lovely Lassies From Kimmage had a hint of irony and sarcasm that may not have been part of the country tradition. Dublin singers were quick-witted, and relished a wry twist."

Brendan Phelan joins the trio just as the conversation turns to contemporary writers who add to the repertoire of traditional singers. Phelan has written countless songs over the past 40 years. Many of his compositions, such as Paddy's Walk To China and Dublin In My Tears have entered the traditional canon without a hint of fanfare or hoopla. Phelan is not given to grand gestures. He recognises the truth of Brendan Kennelly's observation that "all songs are living ghosts/and long for a living voice". Without a singer, a song is nothing more than a dry-boned corpse.

"I tend to write about people I've met or situations that I've witnessed," he says, quietly. "As a songwriter, I think you go through different phases. As a young man, I might have written songs about girls or women; then I went through a phase of writing radical left-wing songs, because I was very influenced by Woody Guthrie, Ewan MacColl and Liam Weldon. Later still, I wrote about people I knew, or know."

Sitting in on a session in the Góilín Club, you'll hear songs rooted in the 19th century, but you'll also hear songs newly-minted to capture the mood and events of the day. Rhyming couplets marry "Mona Lisa" with "Condoleeza" at these gatherings, where an intimate acquaintance with current affairs is a distinct advantage.

"There are so many songwriters in Ireland at the moment who are very clever," Jerry O'Reilly notes. "Seán Mone from Keady in Armagh writes 'funny' songs, and they are funny, but behind the song, there's always a little barb to make you think. For instance, he wrote a song called Lovers And Friends, which includes a line that'll stop you dead in your tracks: 'From the holy and wise, denials and lies/when innocent youth was forsaken.' It's so sharp, so skilled.

"Likewise if you look at the rhyming schemes which Con Fada Ó Drisceoil uses, it's second to none. It's the same rhyming scheme that the hedge poets in the 18th century used: internal rhyming, external rhyming, it's all in there. You'll want for nothing in these songs, absolutely nothing."

All singing sessions and concerts at the first Frank Harte Festival on September 22nd-24th are ticket only. Venues: Tom Maye's Bar, Dorset Street and Teachers' Club, Parnell Square. Enquiries and bookings: 01-8334426, 086-2940652 or 087-2132013. www.goilin.com, e-mail: thegoilin@hotmail.com