Articles by Initial Letters

Interview with Szerényi Béla Jr – folk musician, leader of Magyar Banda. Szerényi Béla Jr grew up in an active family of dance house musicians. His father is a folk musician and master instrument maker. Béla Jr describes being so immersed and enthralled with folk music from early childhood that there was nothing else he could possibly have done with his life. Today his main instruments are hurdy gurdy, tárogató, e-flat clarinet and wooden shepherds flute. He has had formal music training but also learned from master musicians, and at home by osmosis. He also folk dances – though recently made a career choice to concentrate on music – especially authentic style traditional Hungarian folk music. His main project right now is his band – Magyar Banda. "…in this band we don’t restate music collected in the villages, we express our own current thoughts in the language we learned from the [village folk music] masters". Magyar Banda’s video clip known as "Csavargó" (look it up on the net) has sparked discussion in dance house circles. Szerényi B.jr claims ninety percent of the feedback about the clip has been positive. "…putting the bikini and folk music together is unusual – I think it tells alot about the status of our movement". For the last year and a half Szerényi B.jr and Magyar Banda have been working towards their own sound, or version of traditional folk music "without changing the authentic basic rhythm, accompaniment, melodic world, ornamentation". Interview by Grozdits Károly.