It's easy to understand why "English Patient" director Anthony
Minghella was drawn to Sebestyen's pure expressive voice: the
traditional Hungarian song heard under the opening credits, "En
Csak Azt Csodalom (Lullaby for Catherine)," is a perfect vehicle
for he haunting melancholy and languorous ornamentation common
to Central Europe. There are several similarly plaintive songs
on the latest Muzsikas album, "Morning Star" (Hannibal/Rykodisc),
but the album is also full of whirling dance music and stately
courtship songs that might be found in a Transylvanian village
at the turn of a century. That the year could be either 1900 or 2000 is a reflection of
Muzsikas's role as a leading figure in the Hungarian folk movement
of the '70s, which, as with its American and British counterparts,
found young urban folk revivalists visiting isolated rural villages
and learning the songs and customs from the elders. Muzsikas's
primary focus has been Transylvania, which was ceded to Romania
after World War I but is to Hungarian culture what the Deep South
is to America -- a place where diverse folk forms were centered
and where they have somehow survived modernization and cultural
assimilation. "Morning Star" is very much a celebration of village life and
its varied rhythms: sensual love ballads, spirited wedding dances,
deliberate work songs. All are played with grace and gusto by
fiddlers Mihaly Sipos and Laszlo Porteleki, hammer dulcimer/bass
player Daniel Hamar and violist Peter Eri. "Wedding in Fuzes
Village" starts off as a boisterous fiddle-driven courtship dance,
giving say to a stately vocal before racing to its twin-fiddle
conclusion. On "A Song for Madosca," Sebestyen sketches grape
harvest traditions before the melody is twice recast as an instrumental
dance tune, once slow and then once fast. "Round Dance of Gyimes"
is propelled by fiddle and hit-gardon (a struck cello-like instrument),
racing to its ecstatic conclusion with the sounds of dancer Zoltan
Farkas's steps added to the mix. Songs with sadly gorgeous melodies include "My Mother's Rosebush"
(about a bride's last-moment regrets) and "Oh Morning Star-Farewell
to Soldiers," a mournful reflection on youngsters sent far away
for military service. Sebestyen also shines on "I Wish I Were
a Rose," a Siberian ballad with a Celtic gait, thanks to its
flute-zither-mandolin textures. (To hear a free Sound Bite from
this album, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8173.)
"The Best of Marta Sebestyen" (Hannibal/Rykodisc) draws from
the singer's four solo albums, as well as her work with Muzsikas
and Vujicsics, an ensemble that focuses on the traditions of
Southern Hungary's Croats and Serbs. Though the sadness and sorrow
that seem to grip the music are intact, the production is often
more modern and far less stark. Most intriguing are the melodic
and harmonic parallels between Hungarian and Irish music evidenced
on "Istenem, Istenem" and "The Shores of Loch Brann/Hazafele"
(the later melding an Irish ballad learned from Dolores Keane
with a southwestern Hungarian folk song collected by Sebestyen's
mother). Also represented: the Jewish music of Transylvania that almost
disappeared after the Holocaust ("The Rooster Is Crowing" and
a haunting a cappella "Farewell to Shabbat"); a beautiful, multi-tracked
Bosnian love song, "Gold, Silver or Love"; Vujicsics's sprightly
"If the Sour Cherry . . ."; and an extended, elegiac "Hindi Lullabye,"
which beautifully segues into a Romanian folk melody collected
by Bela Bartok as the sarangi (a bowed Northern Indian instrument)
gives way to the fiddle.
Muzsikás - Within each genre that comes to North
America as "world music," there is always one group of musicians
designated as emissaries, virtually equated with that music for a time. In
Hungarian folk circles, that group is Muzsikás. Muzsikás delves deep into
the roots of central European history by combining Jewish, Ottoman,
Hapsburg, and Gypsy influences to bring the world a rich, complex and
mysterious Translyvanian tradition. As part of the folk revival that swept
Hungary two decades ago, in response to the straitjacketed approach of
Russian state-sponsored folklore, Muzsikás played tanchez when it was
dangerous to do so. Now an even broader audience has discovered the
talents of their stellar vocalist, Marta Sebestyén through her work on the
soundtrack to the Oscar-winning film, The English Patient and the Grammy
winning BOHEME by Deep Forest. Exhilarating audiences with their
outstanding musicianship and their devotion to seeking out obscure and
interesting music, Muzsikás has become one of the world's top performing
ensembles |