WHAT YOU HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE

World Music And Music Films At Budapest Ritmo

Budapest Ritmo was established following the success of the womex event in Budapest in 2015, and has since become one of the leading world music festivals in Central Europe. Similarly on this occasion, it offers in one place what cannot be enjoyed elsewhere: performers waiting to be discovered, enthralling concert experiences, and a unique film programme and conference. Between 12 and 15 April, the best bands and solo performers on the ethno music scene – from Iceland to Cuba, from the Balkans to Cyprus, and from Emilíana Torrini to Fanfara Station and Tamikrest – will transport us out of our everyday lives. The series of events opens with a concert of Egypt’s Mazaher, renowned for their powerful ritual music. By Endre

Dömötör

The programme of Budapest Ritmo features a showcase of new discoveries and major concerts, while also providing space for music films and professional meetings, contributing to exchanges on the scene in Hungary and its wider neighbourhood. It brings to a few Budapest venues everything that is currently exciting in world music which builds on traditions and which drives those traditions forward. In a word, it brings rhythm to our lives.

MAZAHER’S SOUL-CLEANSING RITUAL

To listen to the traditional zār music of Egypt, which goes back hundreds of years and in which women play the main role, is a truly remarkable experience. Originating in East Africa, this musical tradition serves to cleanse and calm the soul and flourished primarily in Egypt, where Um Sameh, Um Hassan and Nour El Sabah (Mazaher’s female members) are among the last living practitioners of the genre.

Mazaher are versed in numerous branches of the zār tradition, including those believed to be highly effective in calming spirits with rhythmic drumming and capable of inducing a trance-like state in receptive listeners. The band’s performances are not mere concerts: rather, they offer a glimpse into rituals, providing us with an overall experience of music that reaches into the depths of our souls. Before the performance, Mazaher will hold an instrumental workshop in the House of Music, and between these two programmes the Tariqa group, founded by Saïd Tichiti, presents the ancient Moroccan trance music of Gnawa people.

Stars And Big Discoveries

Naturally, many other discoveries lie in store, and by that we do not only mean the programme featuring new groups on showcase day. We may already be familiar with the miraculous Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini, but not in the guise in which she will appear at Budapest Ritmo, with The Colorist Orchestra enriching her folk-pop classics with cinematic orchestration – while also presenting their joint album Racing the Storm, set for release this year. The appearance of Tamikrest, the well-known big guns of ‘desert blues’, may represent a new rediscovery as their latest records have opened up ever-expanding musical horizons. Fanfara Station, meanwhile, promises a frenetic party mix of North African, Middle Eastern, and European sounds. Also featured here will be a jam band made up of numerous diasporas living in the Austrian capital (Vienna Acoustic Diaries), the music of Romanian lăutari (Corina Sîrghi & Taraful Jean Americanu), a crossover of Polish and Ukrainian traditions (Dagadana), Dalmatian klapa (Klapa Ošjak), an a cappella sextet from Cuba (Vocal Sampling), and a psychedelic folk collaboration between Monsieur Doumani from Cyprus and Hungary’s Óperentzia. We can also hear Estonian stories and fiddle music from the collection of a cultural rescue project carried out on a tiny island in the Baltic Sea (Sounds and Stories from Ruhnu Island), Catalan jazz (Magalí Sare and Manel Fortiá), ferocious dj sets, and a surprise collaboration. Not to mention the Thursday showcase of up-and-coming performers, where we can personally discover Bulgarian ethno jazz (Jazzanitza), Macedonian tradition (Zarina Prvasevda) and, from Hungary, Amaro Duho, Ephemere, Koszika and the BudaPesme duo.

a film directed by the festival’s founder Balázs Weyer (The Sounds That Made Us – Klapa), which gives us an entertaining introduction to the tradition of Dalmatian polyphonic singing. The director describes Klapa Ošjak as ‘the Buena Vista Social Club of Dalmatian polyphony’, true legends who have travelled the world for half a century, but who still gather to sing at the same table in Korčula around which one of their grandfathers first sat them down. ‘The film we made with them is the opening piece in an eight-part series. It is the first one we filmed, following which we looked all along for the same mood we had experienced on those evenings in Dalmatia’, adds Weyer. In tandem with the concert of Tamikrest, we can also watch a captivating film of the group, a superb biographical film about the late Cesária Évora, an Estonian feature film about Hilana Taarka (the singer and representative of the Seto dialect who died in 1933), and a documentary on Iranian female singers that carries a very powerful message.

The Rhythm Of Central Europe

At the same time, Budapest Ritmo is an important professional conference; moreover, through its organiser, Hangvető, the upbeat programme – established under the aegis of Creative Europe –is also joining the event, with the aim of supporting up-and-coming performers via European showcase festivals for world music. ‘In the past five years we have been working to create an infrastructure for world music that has already been around for three decades, and now that its adolescence is over we need to take the genre into adulthood. The creation of the first official European network was an important step in this process, the outcome of which we will ultimately see in the productions’, says Weyer.

Whether the goal is to refresh our professional knowledge or discover new performers, whether it is to relax at concerts of our old favourites or to enjoy a unique film experience, Budapest Ritmo promises to provide the perfect choice.

Melodies On Film Reel

Budapest Ritmo has also created something of a tradition by presenting its own self-produced music films. The series of special Ritmo films is expanded with the work of veni and Regős Ábel, in which we can view the musical world of Veronika Szász, marrying folk songs with electronics and jazz, from a new perspective through Ábel Regős’s acerbic, experimental film language. Another new work is

Can the morals concealed in fairy tales become obsolete? Do their themes need modernisation? What do children understand from a hundred-year-old story, or from folk tales originating long ago? Behind these questions arises the eternal dilemma: what should we think about the stories from our own childhood while we are trying to shield our children from some of them? Ahead of the premiere of Dániel Csengery’s children’s opera Frau Holle, we examined these important questions with the help of three contemporary children’s literature authors who, as practicing parents themselves, have some insight into the subject. We spoke with András Dániel, Orsolya Fenyvesi, and Bálint Harcos about the timeless messages of classic fairy tales and how these authors apply these values in their own work.

By Zsuzsa Borbély