Hungarian Roots
You can live your whole life without ever realising the truth and beauty of your very own heritage.
For twenty years I've listened to all manner of music. In my youth I was into punk and alternative and, as with any curious kid who starts out listening to that sort of stuff, I got bored and moved on to Steely Dan.
Ears get bored quickly. It's a constant search for a novel sound, a new take, something faster, louder, softer, more melancholy, angrier, stranger, melodic, heavier, slower, whatever. You could make do with Tom Waits until you heard Captain Beefheart, Pavement till you heard The Fall, Kraftwerk until you heard Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder.
Recently I travelled to Hungary, where my family comes from. When I was growing up my Mum used to play Hungarian music, mainly the gypsy stuff. She heard one of my Dead Kennedys records once and thought they sounded like a village gypsy band! As a teen, I thought her stuff was schmaltzy and the violin always sounded screechy - like nails on a chalkboard.
Fast forward twenty years or so and I'm starting to really appreciate the beauty of Hungarian music - especially the rootsy pleasures of Muzsikas and Marta Sebestyen is a world music star in her own right, best known in the West as the voice on the soundtrack of The English Patient - never seen the film, never heard the soundtrack.
One of the first things I did in Budapest was walk into a decent looking record shop, no better way to find out what's worth your tourist time and bucks than asking a record store worker. Szilvi, Zita and Attila at Galeon Cd Bolt soon steered me down the path to my Hungarian music education.
They recommended I start with the album "Szep, hajnali csillag" which translates to "Beautiful, Morning Star." Muzsikas are the pre-eminent band from the Hungarian neo-folk movement of the 1970s. The Hungarian movement paralleled similar ones in the West like the British folk turn of the late 1960s, best represented by bands like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and performers like Martin Carthy and Richard Thompson.
The Hungarian neo-folk movement was also a reaction against Soviet repression of authentic folk art and so it had an element of nationalist pride to it. Muzsikas have avoided undue nationalist tendencies by embracing the multicultural nature of Hungary's traditional folk musics, whether it is Jewish, Gypsy or Romanian. Their dedication has been to preserving and reviving these weird and wonderful sounds, not in a slavish fashion but in a way that connects with modern audiences.
The album concentrates on the music of the Transylvanian region; an area that borders Hungary, Moldavia and Romania and probably best known to Westerners as the home of Vlad Tepes (Dracula). The region is central to the claims of national identity and heritage by all three nations and was part of Hungary until the Trianon Treaty at the end of WW1 gave the bulk of Transylvania to Romania. Many Hungarians are still aggrieved at what they believe to be the injustice of the Trianon Treaty ruling: But enough of the politics.
The album starts with a village wedding tune that kicks off with a spritely rhythm and the violins prominently upfront and then a couple of minutes in Sebestyen's plaintive vocals begin and the rhythm changes to a wonderful dirge. The song ends with what sounds like village choir joining Sebestyen on the last four verses. This is the point at which I fell in love with this album. This is the point at which I understood my parents' deep attachment to this music. The song finishes by once again kicking into a higher tempo. The lyrics perfectly reflect the heavy sadness that not just Hungarian but also other Eastern European cultures carry: "They are watching for my death, just to take my beloved away, aj la, la, la, this is why I shall not die, just to break their hearts, to break their hearts."
Track 3 is "Round dance of Gyimes" and is Muzsikas's rendering of a traditional Csango dance tune. The Csango are communities of Hungarian people in three separate pockets of Romanian Transylvania who preserve a cultural heritage that goes back at least 800 years. The Csango lay claim to being the direct descendants of Attila the Hun and many Hungarians believe the archaic Csango dialect is the purest expression of the Magyar language, untouched by foreign influence. The track consists of two instruments: violin and a gardon, a sort of 4-stringed instrument that resembles a cello. The central Asian origins of Hungarian music can really be heard in this track.
The eastern roots of Hungarian music are further in evidence on "If I were a rose" which is musically based on the relationship between a Bashkir and Hungarian melody and also features the throat singing of Berecz Andras. The Bashkir people come from the Ural Mountains in central Siberia and speak a Turkic language related (somewhat distantly) to the Magyar language.
"Szep, hajnali csillag" is an album that has all the fundamentals of great folk music: dark lyrical subject matter, heartfelt playing and a palpable coonection to centuries old traditions. As someone with a Hungarian background, this music speaks to me like the blues.
"Szep, hajnali csillag" provides a beautiful glimpse into the Magyar soul.
For twenty years I've listened to all manner of music. In my youth I was into punk and alternative and, as with any curious kid who starts out listening to that sort of stuff, I got bored and moved on to Steely Dan.
Ears get bored quickly. It's a constant search for a novel sound, a new take, something faster, louder, softer, more melancholy, angrier, stranger, melodic, heavier, slower, whatever. You could make do with Tom Waits until you heard Captain Beefheart, Pavement till you heard The Fall, Kraftwerk until you heard Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder.
Recently I travelled to Hungary, where my family comes from. When I was growing up my Mum used to play Hungarian music, mainly the gypsy stuff. She heard one of my Dead Kennedys records once and thought they sounded like a village gypsy band! As a teen, I thought her stuff was schmaltzy and the violin always sounded screechy - like nails on a chalkboard.
Fast forward twenty years or so and I'm starting to really appreciate the beauty of Hungarian music - especially the rootsy pleasures of Muzsikas and Marta Sebestyen is a world music star in her own right, best known in the West as the voice on the soundtrack of The English Patient - never seen the film, never heard the soundtrack.
One of the first things I did in Budapest was walk into a decent looking record shop, no better way to find out what's worth your tourist time and bucks than asking a record store worker. Szilvi, Zita and Attila at Galeon Cd Bolt soon steered me down the path to my Hungarian music education.
They recommended I start with the album "Szep, hajnali csillag" which translates to "Beautiful, Morning Star." Muzsikas are the pre-eminent band from the Hungarian neo-folk movement of the 1970s. The Hungarian movement paralleled similar ones in the West like the British folk turn of the late 1960s, best represented by bands like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and performers like Martin Carthy and Richard Thompson.
The Hungarian neo-folk movement was also a reaction against Soviet repression of authentic folk art and so it had an element of nationalist pride to it. Muzsikas have avoided undue nationalist tendencies by embracing the multicultural nature of Hungary's traditional folk musics, whether it is Jewish, Gypsy or Romanian. Their dedication has been to preserving and reviving these weird and wonderful sounds, not in a slavish fashion but in a way that connects with modern audiences.
The album concentrates on the music of the Transylvanian region; an area that borders Hungary, Moldavia and Romania and probably best known to Westerners as the home of Vlad Tepes (Dracula). The region is central to the claims of national identity and heritage by all three nations and was part of Hungary until the Trianon Treaty at the end of WW1 gave the bulk of Transylvania to Romania. Many Hungarians are still aggrieved at what they believe to be the injustice of the Trianon Treaty ruling: But enough of the politics.
The album starts with a village wedding tune that kicks off with a spritely rhythm and the violins prominently upfront and then a couple of minutes in Sebestyen's plaintive vocals begin and the rhythm changes to a wonderful dirge. The song ends with what sounds like village choir joining Sebestyen on the last four verses. This is the point at which I fell in love with this album. This is the point at which I understood my parents' deep attachment to this music. The song finishes by once again kicking into a higher tempo. The lyrics perfectly reflect the heavy sadness that not just Hungarian but also other Eastern European cultures carry: "They are watching for my death, just to take my beloved away, aj la, la, la, this is why I shall not die, just to break their hearts, to break their hearts."
Track 3 is "Round dance of Gyimes" and is Muzsikas's rendering of a traditional Csango dance tune. The Csango are communities of Hungarian people in three separate pockets of Romanian Transylvania who preserve a cultural heritage that goes back at least 800 years. The Csango lay claim to being the direct descendants of Attila the Hun and many Hungarians believe the archaic Csango dialect is the purest expression of the Magyar language, untouched by foreign influence. The track consists of two instruments: violin and a gardon, a sort of 4-stringed instrument that resembles a cello. The central Asian origins of Hungarian music can really be heard in this track.
The eastern roots of Hungarian music are further in evidence on "If I were a rose" which is musically based on the relationship between a Bashkir and Hungarian melody and also features the throat singing of Berecz Andras. The Bashkir people come from the Ural Mountains in central Siberia and speak a Turkic language related (somewhat distantly) to the Magyar language.
"Szep, hajnali csillag" is an album that has all the fundamentals of great folk music: dark lyrical subject matter, heartfelt playing and a palpable coonection to centuries old traditions. As someone with a Hungarian background, this music speaks to me like the blues.
"Szep, hajnali csillag" provides a beautiful glimpse into the Magyar soul.
posted by Engel at 4:35 PM
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