Local Fusions: Folk Music Experiments in Central Europe at the Millennium by Barbara Rose Lange (review)

Political and economic events can play a significant role in the world of the arts, and Barbara Rose Lange chose two such occurrences to bookend her case studies of folk music experimentation in Central Europe: the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the 2008 world financial crisis. Focusing primarily on Hungary, Slovakia—and, to a lesser degree, Austria—Lange presents several case studies from this era examining artists and how they addressed complex issues such as identity, gender, and politics through their music. Additionally, she explores how artists blended local traditions with other musical genres and artistic forms such as poetry and dance.

Lange groups the nine chapters based primarily on geography. The last two consider electronic dance music (EDM), local sounds, and how the Internet has allowed sharing, producing, and distributing music globally. While “folk music” is in the subtitle, the focus is more on experimentation, with examples of artists who utilized elements of the traditional in their music. Much of the content comes from Lange’s field-work in Hungary since 1990, and from additional fieldwork in Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna in 2006, 2007, 2012, and 2014.

The book’s introduction offers an overview of the history, sociopolitical conditions, and the stratification of the arts that influenced the regional music under examination. Lange discusses capitalism and its relationship to the arts after the fall of communism in 1989, as well as folk music experiments before 1989. Due to the collapse of state-sponsorship of the arts, artists in the 1990s had to experiment and adapt in order to survive economically. As Europe began to integrate, numerous forces pulled artists in multiple directions, while allowing space for new and individual expression.

Lange first considers gender and ethnicity in Hungary. In the first chapter, she explores masculinity and dance during the Hungarian folk revival through the work of Ferenc Kiss and Szabolcs Gombai. Kiss was from an older generation, and his perspectives on masculinity are examined through the lens of his 1999 concept album Nagyvárosi bujdosók (Outlaws of the city). Lange contrasts this with Gombai (b. 1973) and his 2006 dance piece A férfi tánca (Dance of a man), which exhibits a more contemporary and less traditional view of masculinity. Chapter 2 presents singer Ági Szalóki, the Hungarian folk revival, and multi-ethnic femininity. Lange discusses how Szalóki, who has a mixed ancestry that includes Romani, resisted Romani expectations, and combined poetry, folk song, and jazz to create music that challenged gender roles, and, later, far-right nationalists in the 2000s. Lange utilises ethnographic observations and discourse analysis to consider the early career of singer and writer Bea Palya and the intersection between her life and art in Chapter 3. Special interest is paid to elements of women’s lives, including Palya’s collaboration with Samu Gryllus on creating a song cycle for Sándor Weöres’s Psyché.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 explore music in Slovakia, with an emphasis on new aesthetics. In Chapter 4, Lange offers a study of the musical group Banda and the Slovak folk revival during the 1990s and 2000s. She examines the practices of scenic folklorism, the role of capitalism, and the infusion of new and progressive elements into traditional music. Banda sought to build on sounds from playing with musicians in Slovak villages and incorporated musical elements from other cultures. Chapter 5 examines the Bratislava musical group Požoň sentimental and its attempts to convey nostalgia of their city’s past through collaborations, while Chapter 6 considers the Slovak punk band Hudba z Marsu (Music from Mars) and its efforts to integrate Slovak folk and Romani pop into their music.

While Austria was not a member of the Soviet bloc and did not undergo the post-communist...