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Written in fRoots issue 348, 2012


ÁGNES HERCZKU
Guarding Fire
Fonó FA 274-2 (2011)

Ágnes Herczku is a leading exponent of that special edgy, emotive yet simultaneously magnetically calm and focused female Hungarian vocal.
     After diverse collaborations, including 2007’s Szájról Szájra vocal trio with Szilvia Bognár and Ági Szalóki, on this her second solo album she’s backed by top players including fiddler Tamás Gombai and cimbalist Sándor Ürmös, making the characteristic wild, stirring, stretching, swirling, wiggly táncház sound on fiddles, viola, cimbalom and chugging bass. On one track the accompaniment is just the patter and thump of a tin jug, the Hungarian Roma equivalent of the Indian clay-pot ghatam.
     All the songs are traditional, learned from archives and her own meetings with village singers including Józsefné Maneszes, who appears on one track, and there are a couple of sparky duets with a new tradition-bearer, the impressively feisty 11-year-old Boglárka Fekete.
     The music well justifies its well-designed packaging, a sixty-plus page hardback book with atmospheric photos, full notes and all the lyrics in English and Hungarian.

www.fono.hu


© 2012 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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