- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 271/272, 2006
 

RÓBERT LAKATOS ÉS A RÉV
Hajnalodik – Day Is Dawning
FolkEurópa FECD 019 (2005)

FERENC KISS
The Month Of Love
Etnofon ER-CD 054 (2005)

Róbert Lakatos (not to be confused with Hungarian Rom violinist Roby Lakatos) is a Hungarian viola and violin player experienced in both classical and folk music. With him on The Day Is Dawning is a choice team of violin, viola, kontra, cimbalom, bass and touches of accordion, most of them from the former Hungarian part of south Slovakia, plus on half the tracks the very fine singer Éva Korpás.
      He invokes the spirit of folk music collector and composer Béla Bartók in trying to combine his two musical worlds, but this isn’t like Muzsikás’s Bartók project, which was a set of Bartók works juxtaposed with their traditional source; the only direct quote from the composer is the short statement of the traditional Cushion Dance theme he used for his Duo No.14, which they then develop using a version of the same melody collected in Mezöség.
      Each piece is a combination of sources, mainly traditional with some of their own input. They have other influences too; a Romanian spinning dance almost subliminally morphs into a Latin pulse and then pivots into a Székely tune.
      Their sound is that of a very skilful traditional group, with no overt classical references except in richness of violin and viola tone. As Lakatos says “I am searching for the connecting points and overlaps between classical and folk music in a way that the audience should cry from the bottom of their hearts, ‘Oh, how beautifully they play’”. And they do.

      The Month Of Love is Hungarian, too, and full of the shapes and sounds of traditional music, but it’s a very different sound and approach from the Lakatos album. It’s the third of a trilogy of albums by Ferenc Kiss, ex Vízöntő and Kolinda singer-songwriter and player of koboz, tambura, zither, violin, hit gardon, jew’s harp and more.
      In all of them – 1999’s Outlaws Of The City, 2001’s Sounds Of The Seven Towers and now The Month Of Love - the songs are his own, but he constructs them from traditional melodies and lyrics either from tradition or poems, and they’re played on predominantly traditional instruments.
      His albums are complete works, each with a theme. This one sees him reflecting, at the end of his forties, on love and his sequence of relationships. ‘Oh no, the fare of maudlin singer-songwriters!’ I hear you mutter as you turn away. No, it doesn’t sound like that at all. Partly of course, because it’s in Hungarian, but also because it’s not a narrow-imagination, built on guitar chords thing; it’s musically bold and grainy-textured, and constructed from traditional musical and lyrical building-blocks,.
      Traditional sounds, but not the village band of fiddles and bowed bass, though they’re here too, nor the café orchestra, but a varied, innovative traditional-revival-expansion mix more in the territory of Kiss’s previous bands, or Ghýmes or Vasmalom. As well as Kiss’s own instrumental armoury there are bagpipes and other reeds and wind, and a touch of throat-singing, from Balázs Szokolay and Béla Ágoston, plus from others accordion, synths, guitar, cimbalom, bass and more.
      His own singing is gruffly narrative, almost spoken, contrasting with the strong female tradition-shaped vocals, mainly sung but including speech, rap-like arguing and some orgasmic Inuit-style breath-rhythms, by Bea Palya and a female quartet known as Vándor Vokál.
      It’s a quirky, interesting, inventive, angular mix; he’s a Hungarian original who deserves to be much better known abroad.

FolkEurópa: www.hangveto.hu. Etnofon: www.etnofon.hu. Both are available in the UK from eastern European specialists www.passiondiscs.co.uk


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -