A Calendar of Days

Hungarian Studies, 2008

Every year thousands of individuals come to know Hungarian folk culture through staged performance. From children's ensembles to amateur ensembles to the most professionally organized groups, audiences in Hungary are treated to a wide variety of creatively reinterpreted Hungarian folk dance and folk music traditions. Staged folk dance has become a unique and powerful mode of cultural expression. This article attempts to illuminate staged folk dance's potential for commentary, focusing on the choreographies and work of the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble (Magyar Állami Népi Együttes, or MÁNE as it is commonly referred to). Established in 1951, it is one of the oldest folk ensembles on the European continent and is the only professional ensemble in Hungary that is referenced as a State ensemble. Much more than a static or isolated organization that provides a pleasant evening's entertainment, the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble is integrally woven into the fabric of social life, qualitatively shaping and contributing to an ongoing socio-cultural dialogue. It accomplishes this through its dependence on source folk genres presented in the amplified artistic frame of the stage.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology , 2022

One of the most significant mass manifestations of the state-subsidised cultural expressions of the Socialist Bloc in the second half of the 20 th century was "Red Woodstock", the World Festival of Youth and Students. The first edition took place in the summer of 1947 in Prague. Incidentally, this festival featured Czechoslovak amateur and professional folk music and dance ensembles in a preliminary line-up, which later became the most important established ensembles in the country. Some of these ensembles then appeared regularly at Youth Festivals. Such festival performances were considered very influential performance opportunity for ensembles of folk music and dance in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. The present article, based on data gathered through interviews grounded in oral history and archival research, explores the role of the World Youth Festivals in the process of foundation of Czechoslovak ensembles of folk music and dance and their repertoire negotiation of the traditional music and dance within the vague framework of socialist realism on the one hand, and an everyday-life perspective and ordinary desire to perform pronounced by the ensembles' members on the other.

twentieth-century music, 2007

In the Hungarian folk revival, Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) serve as both privileged informants and exotic Others. The musicians of the revival known as the táncház (dance-house) movement rely heavily on rural Rom musicians, especially those from Transylvania, as authentic sources of traditional Hungarian repertoire and style. Táncház rhetoric centres on the trope of localized authenticity; but the authority wielded by rural Rom musicians, who carry music both between villages and around the world, complicates the fixed boundaries that various powerful stakeholders would place on the tradition. Drawing on media sources and on fieldwork in Hungary and Romania, I examine how authenticity and ‘Gypsiness’ are presented and controlled by the scholars, musicians, and administrators who lead the táncház movement, in particular in the context of camps and workshops dedicated to Hungarian folk music and dance. Organizers often erect clear boundaries of status, genre, and gender roles through such events, which, among other things, address the anxiety raised by Rom musicians’ power in liminal spaces. In addition, I look at how Rom musicians both negotiate with the táncház’s aesthetic of authenticity and challenge it musically. Finally, I discuss how musicians and the crowds that gather to hear and dance to their music together create a carnival atmosphere, breaking down some of the boundaries that organizers work so hard to create. Throughout, I demonstrate that liminality is an extraordinarily pertinent lens through which to view Roma participation in the Hungarian folk music scene.

Hungarian Studies, 2015

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture , 2019

Notes, 2019

This review was published in the Music Library Association’s journal, Notes vol. 76, no. 2, December 2019, 290-293. The version of record is available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/743077/summary, DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/not.2019.0109. This material may not be copied or reposted without written permission of MLA.

Made for the New Hungarian Review periodical. In printing state but the 2002/2 April number could never be published.

First Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on music and dance in Southeastern Europe, 2009

This paper uses the Festival of the Hearts (Festivalul Inimilor) that has taken place in Timișoara, Romania, annually since 1990 as a window to examine the range of performative strategies employed by the folk ensembles participating in this festival. This post-communist festival is organised by the city culture house and was inaugurated to commemorate the heroes of the 1989 Romanian revolution. The discussion focuses around a case study of the Ardeleana, a couple dance found in south west Romania, which is included in the choreographies performed by many of the participating groups. It concludes with a consideration of the extent to which these twenty-first century performances are framed within the various groups’ histories in the communist and transitional period. Reference: Mellish, Liz; Green, Nick (2009). “Performing tradition through transition in Romania : folk ensemble performances at Festivalul Inimilor, Timișoara, Romania.” Velika Stoykova Serafmovska (editor), First Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on music and dance in Southeastern Europe: 4–8 September 2008, Struga R. Macedonia:75–87. Struga, Republic of Macedonia: Macedonian Composers Association - SOKOM. ISBN 978–9989–801–08–2

Hungarian Studies, 2008

Every summer devotees of Hungarian folk music and dance attend camps in idyllic rural settings in Hungary, Romania, and North America where they study “authentic” repertoire with expert instructors. At such camps, traditional material is elevated on the altar of authenticity through constant comparison to the “real thing.” These comparisons underline the fact that North American camps are far away from the “homeland.” In other ways, however, these North American camps are their own homeland: they are a powerful nexus connecting people from different regions, creating what some frequent participants call an “instant community.” The unique character of these events is clearest at after-parties, when the “authentic” repertoire of scheduled programs is often displaced by popular forms from Hungary and Romania as well as genres from beyond the region. As the days and nights wear on, the atmosphere transforms from sacred rite to carnival. Drawing on fieldwork at camps in Hungary, Romania, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Quebec, and Michigan, I discuss how camps organizers and participants canonize “authentic” folk repertoire through conscious festivalization strategies. I then examine how the carnivalesque atmosphere of these camps both undermines purified concepts of “authenticity” and creates a sense of connection unique to North American camps. Keywords: Festival, festivalization, carnivalesque, Hungarian folk music, Hungarian folk dance, revival, camp, diaspora, North American Hungarians

2001