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Written in fRoots issue 294, 2007
 

SZILVIA BOGNÁR
Ének Őrzi Az Időt – Song Preserves The Heartbeat Of Time
Gryllus GCD 057 (2006)

They keep on coming, a steady stream of classy, strongly rooted, finely-played, well-produced records from Hungary, and yet it still seems that the only Hungarian band most people have heard of, if they’ve heard of any, is Muzsikás.
      This one, in an expensive casebound, book-type pack (the sort of packaging that shows a record company believes in a project enough to spend extra on it) is a set of traditional songs reworked and sequenced as a song-cycle on the life of a woman from birth, through seasonal songs, a spinning and flirting song, wedding songs, the death of a soldier husband, stories of the children, to The Last Metamorphosis.
      Szilvia Bognár, who has sung with several significant Hungarian roots projects including those of Makám, Ferenc Kiss, Marianna Majorosi and Vándor Vokál, has the floating poise with hinted grace-notes of what has become the classic Hungarian female traditional voice.
      The musical director, Makám double-bassist Zoltán Kovács, employs in his rich-textured contemporary arrangements a cast of leading players on koboz, violin, kaval, furulya, mbira, sax, gadulka and more, with Márta Sebestyén and Marianna Majorosi joining Bognár on vocals. It’s melodic, exciting, innovative, varied, well worth investigating. As are albums by Róbert Lakatos, Makám, Ági Szalóki, Ferenc Kiss, Üsztürü, the Csík Band, Tükrős, Irén Lovász , Nóri Kovács, Kálmán Bálogh, Ghýmes, Vasmalom, Lantos Banda, Nikola Parov, Gereben, Muzsikás… I could go on.
      www.kalaka.hu


© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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