Global Village - Free Music University: Dávid Somfai Kara - Gergely Agócs
Szervezés:
This programme is held in Hungarian.
In the World Village educational series, Balázs Weyer this time talks with Dávid Somfai Kara and Gergely Agócs about folk music collecting trips in the Caucasus and Central Asia, accompanied by live music.
At the end of the 1930s, Zoltán Kodály outlined the eastern directions for the comparative study of Hungarian folk music. After Gergely Agócs’s spot-check collections among the Khanty, Komi, Udmurt and Bashkir peoples, from the years around the turn of the millennium he organized collecting trips to the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation to document the musical traditions of the peoples living there.
Since 2014 he has been carrying out this work together with Dávid Somfai Kara, and the collection that has developed in this way now comprises some 5,000 melodies. They focused their collecting activities on this area because written sources from the time of the Hungarian Conquest, as well as medieval Hungarian chronicles, place the starting point of the Conquest on the then territory of the Khazar Khaganate or at least within its sphere of influence, that is, in the northern foreland of the Caucasus. During their collecting trips in the villages of the Karachays, Balkars, Nogais and Kumyks, and later in certain regions of Central Asia – in Western Kazakhstan, in the Karakalpak Republic of Uzbekistan, and in the regions of Surxondaryo province – they succeeded in uncovering many obvious parallels, in some cases practically identical melodies, pointing towards Hungarian folk music. At the House of Music, melodies they became acquainted with during these collecting trips and their Hungarian parallels will be performed, supplemented by maps, fieldwork photographs, and audio and video recordings of the melody examples; in addition to sharing their experiences, the collectors will also play the original folk instruments of the listed ethnic groups in order to enhance the illustrative experience.
Dear Visitor, We kindly inform you that during the event, photographs, audio recordings, and/or video recordings may be taken. By attending the event, you consent to the recording of such materials through your implied conduct.
