43rd National Táncház Festival & Fair • 5–7 April 2024
Issue:
Starting page: 36
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Kóka Rozália – Ethnographer Part III. Memories and people from my ethnographic collection trips to Hungarian Moldavia During the summer of 1970, Kóka Rozália set out with 3 friends for Gyimes and Moldavia. First they stopped in the Gyimes valley for „Magdolna Day” – the patron saint's day celebration. From there they went on to Moldavia, where Rózália wanted to return to some of the people she had visited on her previous trip in '69 – to complete some of her research for the Ethnographic Atlas of Hungarians project. Along with an account of her adventures, she describes also the old style of Hungarian used by this ethnic group, sometimes a mixture of Romanian and Hungarian used, and finally recounts a visit with Lakatos Demeter – considered to be the only Hungarian Moldavian poet. He died in 1974. He wrote his poems in Hungarian using Romanian phonetics; he had never gone to Hungarian school. His gift for writing poetry cost him repeated beatings by the local police, his house was constantly under surveillance and the village people were afraid to associate with him. Any association with him could result in fines, sudden illness, or inability to find employment all imposed by the Romanian officials.