Changing Times, Perpetual Tradition? Generational Narratives of Folk Music Interpretation in the Hungarian Táncház Movement.

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Over the last fifty years of the táncház movement, hundreds of thousands of folk music and folk dance enthusiasts have come into daily contact with folklore through the táncház method and the Hungarian model of revival. Over the past decades, it has become clear that the narratives of revival are constantly changing as time passes, domestic and international social processes change, and the known folklore material expands and folklore interpretation methods change.This process generates a number of interpretive differences between the generational cohorts that make up the movement. These discourses permeate the public life of the revival, generating many disagreements and debates, but also providing a good opportunity for research. The aim of my paper is to provide a diachronic overview of the generational narratives of folk music interpretation in the dance music movement, the musical trends that have shaped the revival from time to time, the methodological issues raised by the changing environment, and the responses to them.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Soma Salamon DLA, folk musician and ethnomusicologist, is one of the most prominent members of the younger generations of the Hungarian folk revival movement. Besides his active performing career which spans multiple decades and continents, he is the folk music program curator and consultant of the recently launched House of Music in Budapest. He also works in the Institute for Musicology as a research assistant. He is regularly invited to make presentations at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His main fields of research are traditional flutes in the Carpathian Basin, methodology and comparative analysis in Hungarian ethnomusicology, international relations of Hungarian ethnomusicology and folklore studies, the typology of Hungarian folk melodies, Transylvanian field recordings of Béla Bartók, historical and multicultural relations of stylistic strata in Hungarian folk music, the reception of Hungarian folk music research abroad, and the distinction and borderlands between folk music and world music.