Hungarian táncház

Beginner’s
guide
Festival
pass
source in the early days of the táncház
movement. In his book The Story of
Hungarian Folk, Béla Jávorszky quotes
photographer Péter Korniss on his first visit to
Szék: ‘It was like travelling back in time. Yet
you could feel that it was all very real. The
dance partners were circling in the dim and
humid room, the straw hats and red ribbons
flying. The girls were sitting around the wall lit
by oil lamps, waiting to be asked for a dance.’
The invitation for the first táncház
announced: ‘Music & Dance – just like in Szék.’
The archaic lifestyle and culture of fellow
Hungarians in Transylvania was a revelation in
70s Hungary. At that time, the issue of the
Hungarian minority in Romania was virtually
taboo as it risked raising tensions between two
fraternal socialist countries. One of the
interesting, but unintended,
political consequences of
the táncház movement was
that it brought Transylvania
out into the open.
Béla Halmos and Ferenc
Sebő, the two musicians
playing for the first táncház
events are recognised as
the pioneers. But by the
time the public events kicked off on a regular
basis, they’d accepted a six-month job playing
at a restaurant in Japan and it was the newlyformed Muzsikás who became the first
regular táncház band – with lead violin(s),
accompanying viola (kontra) and sawing
double bass. The music is astonishingly
beautiful: searing violin melodies, starting off
springy and slow and ending fast and furious,
are accompanied by rhythmic major chords.
The music is governed by the dance. Generally
táncház music is long suites of dances starting
slow and finishing fast.
A táncház always included live music and
was usually preceded by instruction in the
dances from those who’d travelled to witness
the real thing. The attendees were young urban
professionals – dressed in jeans, not folk
costumes – fascinated by this little-known
culture. One of the glorious aspects of
Transylvanian music is the different regional
styles. The music of Szék is distinctive in its
own right and the music of Mezőség, the region
where it’s situated, is different from the music
of Kalotaszeg, which is different from the
music of Gyimes and so on. Music from various
regions of Hungary, like Transdanubia and
Szatmár, also appeared on the táncház map.
Through the 70s and 80s the movement
grew and grew. Since 1982 a táncház festival
has been held in the Budapest Sports Arena at
the end of March. The musicians quickly
learned the various styles from different parts
of Transylvania and there were dance houses
every day of the week in Budapest playing not
just Hungarian, but Romanian, South Slav,
Balkan, Greek and Irish music. Marta
Sebestyén, the singer who frequently
performed with Muzsikás, became a celebrity.
Alongside Muzsikás, dozens of other táncház
bands appeared, including Téka, the Ökrös
Ensemble and Tükrös.
With the fall of communism in 1989, people
wondered whether the movement would lose
its impetus. While it hasn’t declined, it has
changed. The venues have switched from
cultural centres to more commercial locations
like ‘folk pubs’ and Fonó, a privately-funded
venue that opened in 1995. With the borders
opened, village musicians from Transylvania
like Sándor ‘Neti’ Fodor,
and the Palatka and
Szászcsávás Bands were
able to come to Budapest
(and Europe and the US) as
celebrated guests.
Hundreds of these
Transylvanian musicians
have been recorded at
Fonó for the Final Hour
project and released on CD. While there might
be fewer dance houses each week, there are far
more summer camps in Hungary, Transylvania
and beyond. In 2011 the táncház movement
was recognised by UNESCO as an intangible
cultural heritage. To see how influential the
movement has been, you only need to look at
the traditional music scene in Poland, which
has embraced its ideas and is supporting
revival bands and organising festivals.
BEST ALBUMS
Sebő Ensemble
Music in Folk
Dancing Rooms
(Hungaroton, 1978)
This was the first recording
to showcase the basic repertoire of the early
táncház movement. It was only released on
LP and is now a collectors’ item.
Muzsikás
Fly Bird, Fly
(Nascente, 2011)
Muzsikás never really
released táncház albums, but
this is an excellent Best Of. Reviewed in #81.
The Ökrös Ensemble
Transylvanian
Village Music
Táncház music
is long suites of
dances starting
slow and
finishing fast
Péter Korniss
Hungarian táncház
The Hungarian dance house movement was a unique
grassroots phenomenon in the former Eastern Bloc
that still resonates today. Simon Broughton reports
T
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112
So what was going on in Hungary? And why
were thousands of young people so desperate
to connect with traditional music? From the
1950s on, the folk music traditions of Sovietdominated Eastern Europe – from Poland to
Bulgaria – had been hijacked by state
ensembles performing sanitised music with
costumes and choreographed dance routines.
It was the same in Hungary. But the
communist leader János Kádár – in power
since the unsuccessful Revolution of 1956 –
had evolved a policy of what was dubbed
‘Goulash Communism.’ This allowed for a
w w w . s o n g l i n e s . c o. u k
w w w . s o n g l i n e s . c o. u k
This is a great táncház band
led by Csaba Ökrös, here featuring
Transylvanian fiddler ‘Neti’ Sándor and one
of the new female vocalists, Ági Szaloki.
Tükrös
Hungarian Village
Music from the
20th Century
(FolkEuropa, 2000)
A really fine recording of village music from
Szatmár in north-east Hungary, played by
one of the leading current bands.
BEST COMPILATION
Various Artists
Hungarian World
Music: From
Traditional to World
Music (FolkEuropa, 2010)
A three-CD compilation that includes many
of the best táncház bands from the 70s to
2000s. Reviewed in #76.
+ DATE Some of the leading bands will perform at
WOMEX in Budapest on October 21
The best online source for Hungarian folk
albums is www.hangveto.hu
IF YOU LIKE
HUNGARIAN
TáNCHáZ, THEN TRY…
Janusz
Prusinowski Trio
Mazurki
(Sluchaj Uchem, 2008)
Simon Broughton
he start of the Hungarian táncház
movement can be dated very precisely.
The first event was held on May 6
1972 in Ferenc Liszt Square in the centre of
Budapest. But this and two subsequent events
were for invited guests only; the first public
dance house took place in February 1973.
It was completely sold out with the sort of
crowd you’d expect for a rock concert. People
were climbing in through the toilet windows,
in a rush to hear completely traditional
Hungarian folk music! The police arrived
with blaring sirens to organise the crowd.
more liberal economy and political and
cultural freedoms that didn’t exist in the
neighbouring countries. In Hungary there
weren’t the food queues of Poland or Romania
and the regime was more open. “Whoever is
not against us, is with us,” said Kádár.
Two things combined to create the táncház
effect in Hungary: firstly, the cultural freedom
for people to start a bottom-up, grass roots
musical movement and secondly, the
discovery of the rich living tradition of
Hungarian music in Transylvania in
neighbouring Romania. The ‘godfather’ of the
movement was the folk music and dance
researcher György Martin at the Academy of
Sciences, who’d travelled extensively in
Transylvania. The term táncház (dance house)
wasn’t a common Hungarian word, but the
local name for where people gathered to dance
in the Transylvanian village of Szék.
Szék is a predominantly Hungarian village
that a handful of dancers and musicians had
visited and became the primary musical
(Rounder, 2000)
A whole generation later, the
traditional scene in Poland
has dramatically taken off
with this trio being the leading revival band.
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