ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND UNDER THE SKY

Celebrating 20 years of twin-town relationship between Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda) and Óbuda-Békásmegyer

Székely Land folk music from the last 120 years

Featuring:

Marianna Nyitrai - vocals
Zoltán Juhász - flute
Üsztürü Band

"How did you learn to play the flute and who taught you?" we asked Szekely flutist János Szőcs in Orotva in 2016. "How did the first man learn to play the flute?" he asked in return.

Thus, from the beginning of time, a man of traditional peasant culture sees his own music as an existing heritage. The first  recordings of this music have been known since the phonographic collections of Béla Vikár, then Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály in 1898. 120 years may seem short compared to the beginning of time, but unfortunately enough to cover the continuing decline of peasant culture to this day. The reason for the decline is that the creation-centric traditional peasant culture that preserves natural cycles is displaced by a money-centric system of commodity production. The pre-WWI recordings thus reflect an even more complete musical tradition than today's ones, we may think. Indeed, in many cases, old phonograph recordings reveal ancient melodies, modes of presentation, and inner identities that are no longer echoed in later collections. On the flip side, however, even to this day, we can find melodies from this "golden age" performed by village singers and instrumentalists. Some of these melodies have been saved on the oldest recordings, but others appeared much later. The former show "snapshots" of the actual life of phonographic reflected in current versions or other melodies with similar properties. All of the performers of the concert can attest that these later recordings, or even today's personal experiences, are hardly necessary to interpret the oldest, crackling and fading recordings. The fact that the later collections of the past 120 years has been expanding our knowledge of Hungarian folk music even today with multitudes of valuable and ancient melodies shows that folk music firmly adheres to its fundamental values, and that its ideals of beauty which reflect the Order of Creation, have not been affected by catastrophies of history or the fashionable music of the media.

The performers of the concert are almost all Székelys. Marianna Nyitrai is the granddaughter of Székely grandparents hailing from Bukovina, who moved to Hungary, and all of the members of the Üsztürü Band and Orsolya András bear the title "honorary Székely" which they received for studying Székely Land flute music.

Admission free