Muzsikás - Biography
By J Poet
Muzsikás is one of the best Hungarian folk music ensembles and the only Hungarian band with an international profile. They often collaborate with Marta Sebestyén, a folk artist in her own right. In 1995, “Szerelem, Szerelem,” a song from The Prisoner’s Song (1986 Hannibal) the first Muzsikás album released outside of Hungary, was chosen for the film The English patient. When Muzsikás appeared on The English Patient Soundtrack (1996 Fantasy) they became world music stars. Sebestyén still sings with the band on occasion, but pursues her own career both as a solo artist and a member of other ensembles. In 1991 Sebestyén became the first folk singer to win the country’s top musical award, The Liszt Prize.
Sebestyén was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. Her mother was a music teacher who had studied folklore and folk music with Zoltan Kodaly, one of Hungary’s great modern composers. Sebestyén mother exposed her to traditional music from a young age. She studied music at the Budapest Academy and was soon singing in a tanchez (dance house,) a secret club where students were keeping their culture alive playing folk music, particularly the music of Transylvania, a part of Hungary that had been absorbed by Romania. The Communist government felt that the traditional songs about killing kings and the hard lives of peasants would foment resistance to the state, so folk music was banned. Luckily, people like Sebestyén and her compatriots in Muzsikás resisted the band with these clandestine concerts and dances.
Sebestyén was well known on the folk scene as a teenager and sang with other folk bands before teaming up with Muzsikás - Sebö & Halmos and Vujicsics. She made three albums with Vujicsics, before and after playing with Muzsikás, Vujicsics (1988 Hannibal/Ryko), Serbian Music from Southern Hungary (1989 Hannibal/Ryko), and Southern Slav Folk Music (2000 Hungaroton, Hungary).
Muzsikás is the Hungarian word for folk musician, and the band adapted it at a time when folk music was officially banned in Hungary. All the band members have been classically trained and they play the classical compositions of composers like Bartók and Kodály along with folk songs. They started playing together in 1973 when Sipos, Eri, Hamar, and Csoori decided to apply their classical training to folk music. They joined the tanchez movement as a reaction to the Russian music that was dominating Hungary at the time. The band began learning their repertoire the same way Sebestyén had, by listening to recordings, but as they grew in confidence as a band and as musicians, they began making trips to Transylvania and other outlying regions to record and collect songs that were in danger of vanishing. Mihály Sipos, was born in 1948 and he grew up learning traditional songs from his paternal grandmother. His maternal grandmother was a singer and lover of classical music and gave him his first violin. Starting at age 7, he studied classical violin for 11 years. In 1972 he started playing folk music and started Muzsikás with Dániel Hamar and Sándor Csoóri in 1973. Hamar studied classical piano and bass as a boy and got interested in folk music in 1973, and had visited remote villages to study traditional music making just before meeting Sipos and starting Muzsikás. Peter Eri’s stepfather was György Martin, a famous folklorist and he brought his stepson on his trips to collect the Hungarian traditional dances and music. He was the bass player for one of the first modern Hungarian folk bands, Sebö & Halmos, where he met Sebestyén. By the mid 70s, the official attitude toward folk music began to change and Muzsikás was signed to the national label, Hungaroton.
Muzsikás signed with Hannibal Records in 1986, and released The Prisoner’s Song (1986 Hannibal/Ryko), a collection of tracks from their first three albums for the Hungarian national record company, Living Hungarian Folk Music (1978 Hungaroton), Muzsikás Kettő (1980 Hungaroton), and It Is Not Like It Used To Be (1982 Hungaroton). Includes an a capella recording of “Szerelem, Szerelem,” later re-recorded for The English Patient soundtrack.
Since their international debut, Muzsikás and Sebestyén have continued to tour and record. Their albums include Blues for Transylvania: The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania (1990 Hannibal/Ryko 1990), Maramaros (1993 Hannibal/Ryko) Morning Star (1997 Hannibal/Ryko), and The Bartók Album (1997 Hannibal/Ryko) a collection of folkloric tunes that Bartók adapted for his own compositions. Sebestyén’s albums are Transylvanian Portraits: Hungarian Village Music from Transylvania (1993 Koch) with the Ökros Ensemble, Apocrypha (1995 Hannibal/Ryko), Kismet (1996 Hannibal/Ryko), Best of Marta Sebestyén: The Voice of the English Patient (1997 Hannibal/Ryko) Dúdoltan én Sebestyén (2000 Hungaroton), and High Days (2000 Hungaroton) a collection of Hungarian Christmas folk songs.
