Maciej Szajkowski (Warsaw Village Band) says: ‘Just when you think you’ve seen everything in folk music, you come across a band like Odpoczno.’But could it be quite the opposite? When you know absolutely nothing about Polish folk music, you come across a band like Odpoczno. And the show begins…I had…
Kapela Maliszów – the Malisz Family Band – is already familiar to the Hungarian audience. The band formed by Jan Malisz and his two children Zuzanna and Kacper performed at Budapest Ritmo in 2016, also appeared in Sambucus Festival this summer, on Saturday they are giving a concert at Fonó Budai…
Finding the conscious, open minded, empathetic, natural and free spirit people of our world is a really powerful, energizing and encouraging experience. Cigdem Aslan grew up in Istanbul, where the extremities and the duality of the world is perceivable minute by minute, which, however teaches a lot…
Sergent Garcia, who was famous for his formerly puppy slackness, now is a bearded wise man looking for proximity to nature, but he doesn«t change that: he is still characterized by his commitment to curiosity for music and people. In the 20th jubilee concert, the Budapest Folk Fest will arrive on 25…
The „Northern Light” is a title better, but less didactic, so no objections here. Just as we’re not objecting to anything about the double concert, as it went great, despite the fact that the two performers have had better shows here, in Hungary. But that one decade that went by without a single…
A good 20 years ago we were shooting a film in the village of Csenyéte, the place known for immeasurable poverty and hopelessness in the county of Borsod, somewhere in the Cserehát-region. Mine was a minor role in the film, but I was also responsible for the soundtrack, so the crew and I set out to…
The disbanded but then half-revived band “Bajdázó” are more than simply “good”. Their new LP sounds almost like their others, while different at key points.
On their album, the “Hurdy-Gang” trio have decided to carry out a rather peculiar undertaking tottering on the boundary between authentic folk and oriental-historic world music. The LP’s foundations include strong musical traditions ranging from Hungarian folk music to tunes from Asia Minor, and…
When God created music, he must have first stuck his finger down in Mali. In fact, to call contemporary Malian music world music is a bit odd, as the music that is born there today might have easily been heard by the locals thousands of years ago, in the same form and with the same contents. We are…
According to Béla Bartók, the definition of a folk song is “something that was sung by many and sung for long”. Máté Kalász and Attila Mihó are characters and prime violinists of the authentic folk music “current” whom there’s much to say about: they are two of the most active young musicians with…
Alexandra Czeglédi’s article is based on interviews she conducted in Cape Town, South Africa. It deals with local interpretations and manifestations of the world music.
I remember a concert from the Mediawave Festival before the millennium; actually, I don’t exactly remember it, there’s just one thing that got stuck in my head about it. This one thing stuck so much it defines my attitude to music till this very day.
Béla Kása - Self portrait
Had a beat-band at the age of 13, marvelled at the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on cheap photos, watched wide-eyed the Hungarian pioneers of beat music from the windows of the legendary Bosch-klub in Budapest. This bustling and fantastic world was what he had to leave…
This September sees the 20th anniversary of the “Last Hour program (Utolsó Óra Program)”, the project called to life by a handful of enthusiastic folk musicians, ethnographers, photographers and filmmakers in the Fonó Music Hall. The most grandiose idea of collecting folk music at the turn of the…
For a good hundred years it’s been the final hour, many have sounded the alarm, and you have to admit, with a reason. But the traditional domain of folk music that seems to disappear or dissolve can be observed from the direction that we today call authentic folk music, which itself has been the…
