Folk and World Music

Hungarian Music

Course 1 · Chapter 9 · Folk Revival & World Music

The dance-house movement of the 1970s produced more than dance evenings. Over the following decades, Hungarian folk-influenced musicians moved on to stage performance, recordings, festivals abroad and fusion with jazz, rock and other traditions, entering what record shops and festival organisers call "world music". This chapter follows that path through three kinds of group: those who stayed close to village tradition, those who built new music from it, and Roma-led bands who brought their own heritage to wider audiences. It also asks what the "world music" label does for and to the music. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

From Dance House to World Stage

Staying close

Groups such as Muzsikás (Chapter 6) kept to village repertoire and playing style, recording with older musicians and touring internationally (check). Their credibility rests on closeness to sources.

Building new music

Other groups used folk instruments and melodies as raw material for new compositions with rock, pop or jazz influences. Ghymes, a group formed in Slovakia by Hungarian-speaking musicians, is a well-known example (check the origin and the dates).

Roma-led bands

Besh o droM (the name means "sit on the road" in Romani; check) mixes Hungarian, Roma and Balkan influences with brass and rock energy, and has toured internationally (check). Other Roma-led groups, such as Kalyi Jag, work in Roma musical traditions (check).

The World Music Scene

The label. "World music" was adopted as a marketing category in the late 1980s, bringing together music from many places that did not fit Western pop or classical shelves (check the origin of the term). It opened doors for Hungarian groups and also lumped very different traditions together.
Festivals and labels. Hungarian groups appeared at festivals such as WOMAD and recorded for international world-music labels (check which).
Recognition. Márta Sebestyén's voice reached wide audiences through film and recordings (Chapter 6), and Hungarian groups have been nominated for and won awards in the world-music field (check).
Authenticity. Audiences and critics often ask whether such music is "authentic", and musicians reply that tradition is always changing and that the question can be unfair (check).

Hungarian Jazz

Item (check each)	Detail
Early history	Jazz reached Hungary in the 1920s, played in cafés and clubs, and had a mixed reception under the state in the mid-twentieth century.
Folk and jazz	Musicians such as the guitarist Gyula Babos and others combined jazz harmony with Hungarian melodies and rhythms.
Abroad	Hungarian players made careers in the United States and Western Europe, among them the guitarist Gábor Szabó, who left in 1956 and played in the United States (check).
Today	A lively scene in Budapest with clubs, a jazz academy and festivals (check).

What does "world music" do? The label can bring a small-language country's music to an audience that would never hear it, and it can lead listeners to hear "traditional" as a single, timeless sound. For the musicians, the risk is being asked to repeat an image of tradition for foreign audiences, while the benefit is a working career. Scholars who study the field ask who defines authenticity, who profits and who gets to change a tradition (check the scholarship). The honest answer for Hungarian groups is that it has done both.

A British comparison Compare Scottish and Irish traditional music in the folk and world-music circuits, where groups such as Capercaillie and Altan travel the same festivals (check the examples). The same debates about authenticity, fusion and the marketing label apply.

Check the details Group names, origins, dates and awards are from general knowledge and change as bands form and split. Take care with the Roma-related names and the translation of Romani words, and verify against the groups' own websites, labels and reliable reference works.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe the three kinds of folk-influenced group in this chapter and give a reason a listener might prefer each.

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Exercise 2

Explain the argument over "authenticity" in world music and give one point for each side.

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Exercise 3

Pick one Hungarian group or musician working abroad and write a short plan for checking how they present Hungarian tradition to a foreign audience.

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Quick Reference

Close to tradition: Muzsikás and similar groups (check)
New music from folk: Ghymes (check)
Roma-led: Besh o droM, Kalyi Jag (check)
World music: a marketing label from the late 1980s (check)
The caution: "authentic" is a claim to be tested, not a fact