The Republic of Hungary is located in Central Europe, northwest of Romania. Border countries: Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine.
Traditional Hungarian Music
In the late 1970s, a dance house folk music movement took place in Hungary. Ferenc Sebô and Béla Halmos, members of Sebô Band, visited remote villages in Transylvania and elsewhere where folk music was preserved in its original form. Sebô and Halmos collected traditional folk songs and learned to play instruments the traditional way.
The revival of Hungarian folk music and country dancing became massively popular among city-dwelling young people. Numerous bands that played traditional folk music became well-known: Kolinda, Mákvirág, Muzsikás, Téka, Vízöntô, and Vujicsics gained fame within and outside Hungary.
In 2022, Hungarian string band tradition was inscribed in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Hungarian Gypsy Music
In Hungary, there are three different Gypsy (also called Roma) communities, the Wallachians, the Romano-Hungarian, and the Boyash.
Wallachian Gypsies maintained their mother tongue. The musicians play the guitar; tambura; mandolin, jug and spoons.
The Romano-Hungarian Gypsies use the Hungarian language. They use violins, viola, cimbalom (hammered dulcimer), acoustic bass, and clarinet.
Beyash Gypsies migrated from Romania and settled in the County of Zala. The instruments they use include the guitar, tambura, zither, and jug.
Sometime around the 18th, Gypsies found a good way to make a living as professional musicians. Gypsy musicians performed Hungarian traditional musician and other musical forms at dance events, weddings and other celebrations.
György Martin, eminent Hungarian folklore researcher
György Martin, commonly known as “Tinka,” was a highly acclaimed ethnochoreologist, ethnographer, and music folklorist of Hungarian origin. Born in Budapest in 1932, he commenced his academic pursuits at Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Arts in 1950. Initially focusing on Hungarian Language and Literature, Martin subsequently pursued studies in Ethnography and Museology.
In 1951, he embarked on a four-year tenure as a professional dancer in the esteemed ensemble led by István Molnár, a reputable folk dance researcher and choreographer. By the mid-1950s, Martin began his employment at the Népművelési Intézet (Institute for Folk Culture) within the Department of Ethnography and Folk Dance. In this capacity, he meticulously documented and scrutinized Hungarian dance folklore, thus contributing to the development of the institute’s rich collection of folk dances. Martin successfully attained his doctoral degree in 1964, followed by his candidate degree in 1969.
In 1965, Martin collaborated with fellow ethnomusicologist Bálint Sárosi to undertake an expedition for the purpose of collecting traditional music and dance in Ethiopia. During this period, under the mentorship of Zoltán Kodály, he became affiliated with the Ethnomusicology Study Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, an association that persisted from 1965 onwards. Martin’s research career flourished as he assumed the role of a research fellow in the Academy’s Institute for Musicology, a position he held until his demise in 1983. His invaluable findings were disseminated among the global academic community, and he further established himself as a founding member of the Ethnochoreology Study Group within the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM).
Spanning from 1956 to 1983, Martin undertook extensive fieldwork in the ethnographic region of Kalotaszeg in Transylvania. These ventures yielded a vast assortment of archival materials, comprising dance films, audio recordings of instrumental, vocal, and whistled melodies, as well as oral history interviews with local village performers.
Of notable significance was Martin’s profound regard for István “Mundruc” Mátyás, whom he esteemed as the preeminent peasant dancer in East-Central Europe. Consequently, Martin diligently captured Mátyás’ dances, songs, and oral history accounts through numerous field recordings until Mátyás’ passing in 1977. It was in the year 1961, alongside fellow researchers Bertalan Andrásfalvy, Zoltán Kallós, and Ferenc Pesovár, that Martin embarked on his maiden venture to Méra, a village situated within the Nádasmente subregion of Kalotaszeg. There, he conducted his initial forays into silent filmmaking and sound recording, thus commencing a series of subsequent visits aimed at documenting the local villagers’ dance style and folk traditions, as well as the music and dances performed by the esteemed Árus musician family dynasty.
Owing to his scholarly contributions to the field of ethnochoreology, as well as his profound impact on dance pedagogy and the Hungarian táncház revival movement, Martin’s legacy stands alongside those of Bartók and Kodály as one of the most eminent figures in Hungarian folklore research.
Hungarian Musicians
Ágnes Herczku
Ágnes Künstler
Aladár Csiszár
Ando Drom
Dalinda
Daniel Hamar
Dűvő
Etnorom
István Balogh
Kálmán Balogh & Gypsy Jazz
Kerekes Band
László Major
Martá Sebestyén
Mihaly Sipos
Miklos Balogh
Muzsikás
Ökrös Ensemble
Omar Bashir
Parno Graszt
Péter Éri
Romano Drom
Téka
Üsztürü
Zoltan Lantos
