Welcome

Welcome to my blog on Hungarian folk music!

Hungarian folk music. Tschardasch, Czardas, Gypsy musicians with the violin and other strings, cimbalom, they play the sweetest melodies for you at the table when you eat out in Hungary. Pieces by Brahms or Liszt. And Márta Sebestyén, singing with her mesmerizing voice in the movie The English Patient, or the band Muzsikás. Probably these are your first impressions about it, but there is much, much more to it.

It might happen to you that you run into "Hungarian Folk Music" or "Hungarian Gypsy Music" when you surf on the net, in a CD store, attend a concert or go to a restaurant where they play live music during the dinner - but sometimes, all these have not much to do with real Hungarian village music. Indeed, composers of many of those songs are known, therefore they don't fall into the definition of traditional music. Often, these pieces are brilliant, performed by virtuoso musicians.

A local band from North-Eastern Hungary, my birth place:



And the famous Monti Csárdás (Czardas)



If you want to know about the extraordinarily rich folk music of my country (to be more exact: the historical Hungary, which was before World War I, three times as big as it is today), this blog is the right place for you. Resources on Hungarian folk music of the past and of the present: collections, artists playing Hungarian folk in its traditional form or newly arranged (which comes under the all-encompassing heading of world music), places where you can listen to this music live or on the net, album releases, events and other news from the scene of Hungarian folk music & dance which are one of the most precious "export goods" of my homeland - and which is impossible to live without, once you got to get the taste of it...

You will love these albums: