Friday, December 6, 2019

26. World Music: Hungary/Romania, ACJ Music Academy


How are you?


Following the last week, I am going to start my 26th lecture.

I had conducted music lectures at Art Collage JANG in Seoul, South Korea every Saturday from March 2015 to December 2017.

I am going to introduce some of the music in the lecture with a brief overview of the lecture by the lecture’s order every Saturday.

Please refer to the following link for my previous lectures.


The 26th lecture for today is "World Music: Hungary/Romania".

This lecture was the 26th lecture of “ACJ Music Academy”, which was held on 24 October 2015.

The Magyarok, making up the Hungarian people, has a unique language that is independent of the Slavs surrounding them, and they are characterized by a firmness of superiority for their national identity.

Hungarians have strengthened their identity through their traditional music in order to resist the assimilation of the surrounding Slavic culture while maintaining their national superiority and confidence.

The strengthening of the ethnic identity of the Hungarians began with folklore studies as in other countries, and the culmination of Hungarian folk music was achieved by the composers ‘Bela Bartok’ and ‘Zoltan Kodaly’.

They were not only excellent composers, but also excellent folklore scholars, and gave birth Hungarian folk music into a global music.

One of the representative Hungarian folk music is 'Tanchaz', meaning ‘dance house’.

The music is derived from the traditional dance house of the village, and the Tanchaz is a shabby dance house whose main repertoire is folk music.

The ‘Tanchaz Movement’ began in the 1970s as a backlash against national-led folk music modernization policies.

Musicians such as “Ferenc Sebo” and “Bela Halmos” collected and learned music from different villages along the footsteps of Bartok and Kodaly and introduced them to Budapest.

Romania, which means “the country of the Romans”, is surrounded by many Slavic countries, including Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Around 106 AD, the Roman emperor ‘Trajan’ conquered the current area of Romania where the ‘Dacia’ lived at the time and the territory became a tributary of the Roman Empire.

Despite the powerful industrialization policy of the Ceauşescu regime over 24 years, Romania is still easily accessible to rural villages and maintains a social system dominated by deep-rooted practices based on the rural economy.

This means that Romanian people are very interested in traditional music and have a strong will to keep the music.

One of Romania's traditional music, “Doina”, is the most widely known Romanian traditional music, meaning ‘lament’ or ‘longing’.

This music has a sad mood following a downward pattern and it maximizes sadness with free improvisation and slow tempo.

Doina's lyrics, with the tendency of blues, are poetic, full of sadness, pain, farewell, and longing.

Today, I will introduce 3 music as follows:

1. Hetedik-Ferenc Sebo (Hungary)
2. Kalotaszegi Táncok-Muzsikás (Hungary)
3. The Lonely Shepherd-Gheorghe Zamfir (Romania)

You can listen to all the songs from following YouTube link.


Next week, I will lecture "World Music: England" as my 27th lecture.

Thank you.




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