Népzene, or Hungarian folk music, has always been a quietly influential, if not leftfield, version of music. A mix of Old Central Europe and even older nationless Europe, népzene has moved greats like Bela Bartok, Franz Liszt, all the way to Martin György to toy with transforming its deep pentatonic melodies through all sorts of windy compositions. Hungarian band Vízöntő (which translates to Aquarius) created a little known album Villanypásztor (aka Electric Shepherd) bridging further another interesting gap, tying the fourth world aesthetic to this idea of a never-ending Hungarian folk tradition that can survive in whatever far flung diaspora it exists. Ahead of this curve, lay the ideas of one Károly Cserepes whose brainchild brought them to fruition.
Vízöntő initially began in Budapest, in 1976, as an avant folk group led by Ferenc Kis of népzene band Kolinda. Seeking to take the idea of Hungarian folk music further into the experimental realm, Ferenc convinced multi-instrumentalists Károly Cserepes, János Hasur and Győző Zsákay, to join him and create music founded in folk, with heavy protest ideas, to counteract the ruling malaise experience under the Goulash Communists of that era.
From their self-titled debut through 1985’s Mélyvíz they served as a Hungarian analog to England’s Incredible String Band, the Third Ear Band, or France’s Malicorne, willfully creating fascinating, leftfield, folk entirely tied to acoustic instruments (and to Hungary’s folk tradition). Something hand changed in that final year, though.
In 1984, Károly had fallen in love with the ideas (and music) found in Eno and Hassell’s fourth world releases. Unable to bring them to their fruition under the Vízöntő umbrella just yet, he found in the open minded space of Hungarian Pop and folk icon Márta Sebestyén a willing co-conspirator. For two years, they rounded up little-known Hungarian musical visionaries like László Hortobágyi, Levente Szörényi, and members of his own band to create something akin to Kate Bush’s otherworldly digital Avant Pop. Jeles Napok: Karácsonyi Magyar Népdalok and Szerelmeslemez show that brilliant “updating” of Hungarian Folk that could fit the modern world of samplers, synths, and drum machines (without losing any of its hypnotic scale runs). Károly Cserepes was found at the heart of these arrangements, embellishing Márta’s sampler-led demos with oodles of sonic world music atmosphere.
On Villanypásztor, Vízöntő, was willing to go one step further. A mission statement of sorts, they had promised they would write an album full of originals, with no adapted music. For Vízöntő would “play contemporary music for the man of this age, a music seminal with its own message, a music they will call folktemporary”. They wanted to create the Hungarian folk album that mined its past to marry it with this new electronic future.
Here’s where they truly come into their own. The album kickstarts with “Szeretem A Szépeket” (which aptly translates to “I Love Beauties”), an excellent take on wubby dubby bass sounds and violin-led Hungarian Folk trance music. Electro-acoustic experimental Pop rears its head on the following track, “Nád Jancsi”, with the jew’s harp playing a weirdly compelling foil to some truly out-there fourth world drum machine grooves. “Kontyoló” wouldn’t sound out of place in one of Cabaret Voltaire’s classic beat-driven albums.
Skipping around, “Kiszáradt A Tóból” features a distinct Hassell-like trumpet affectation soaking up the vaguely Asian-sounding scales that instantly reminds us that this (in essence) comes from a Hungarian folk background, allowing Ferenc Kis to give one of his most affecting vocals yet. The album itself ends on two ballads that recall all sorts of diaspora in ways that seem to make the Hungarian folk tradition easily something that could be far more universal.
On “Sír Az Út Elõttem” (This Road Cries In Front Of Me), László Hortobágyi takes an already elegiac ambient ballad into further, sublime territory adding chopped up and elongated field recordings from Peter Szöke’s equally beguiling collection of tormented environmental music, into this larger, even more personal treatise, that gets further drilled down through. “ Amerikás Dal” takes you home through an all enveloping heady phase of wind pipes, appearing like apparitions bringing you bits of longing as they circle through. Villanypásztor is a special album one that should serve as a guide (or entryway) to this little known but quite special era in Hungary’s long-running folk dialogue.