Rolling in Budapest Cultural information in English … Hear everything first hand

Trio Mandili – Georgian musical group

Óbuda (Old Buda) World Music Week is organized by Kobuci Kert (Koboci Garden) for the 7th year. Once again offers special opportunities for the world music scene and the contemporary Hungarian community and naturally welcomes foreigners staying in Budapest.

Between June 23-29, real musical delicacies will be staged: different styles, musical roots and performance methods, as the best of the genre present them today. A free garden cinema will open the series of events, followed by the African-Finnish Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble and the three young and charming Georgian ladies, Trio Mandili, among others. The 30-year-old Kerekes Band and the world-class figure of the Hungarian jazz scene, 70-year-old Mihály Dresch, will celebrate their birthdays at Kobuci.

The world music event series will start with a free garden cinema on June 23 at 8 p.m., where a joint work by György Szomjas and Béla Halmos, the documentary “Still in the Heart”, will be screened. The portrait film commemorates János Zerkula, the great Gyimes Csángó gypsy prima, one of the last representatives of classical folk music. The blind musician played a violin equipped with a fifth (resonant) string, sang along, and was accompanied by his wife, Regina Fikó, on the tötőgardon. In addition to presenting the unique-sounding, archaic Gyimes music and dances, the suggestive film presents the scenic beauty of the Gyimes Valley and the living conditions of the people living there through Zerkula’s unique life story from a historical and ethnographic point of view.
The series of concerts will be launched on June 24 at 7 p.m. by the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble, an orchester consisting of Benin (an African country neighboring Ghana and Nigeria) and Finnish members. The musicians from the two countries, which are geographically and culturally distant, are seemingly unrelated, yet their collaboration produces pulsating, cheerful and danceable music. The band is a regular performer at the biggest festivals, be it the Montreal Jazz Festival, Sziget, or WOMEX.

On June 25th at 7 p.m., the Kerekes Band will celebrate its 30th anniversary at the Kobuci Garden. The band’s experimental quintet has been mixing the energies of distant styles since the beginning. Based on Hungarian folk music, they play psychedelic flute parts, sometimes softly blown, sometimes shrieking. It is no exaggeration to say that during the three decades they have performed on the stages of all the most important Hungarian festivals and concert venues, but they are also regularly invited abroad. Now, for example, they are coming to Óbuda (Old Buda) after concerts in Berlin and Rodosto. This year marks 16 years since the Kobuci dance house series started, where the best bands of the Carpathian Basin give each other a handshake every two weeks. Over the past decade and a half, thousands of people have danced to Moldavian and string music in the open air. One of the highlights of this series will be the performance of Fanfara Komplexa and Pál István Szalonna and Band.

On June 26. The next day at 7 p.m., another band specializing in crossing borders and breaking rules, Besh o droM, will take the stage. The band, which mixes Hungarian folk music with Balkan styles, has been entertaining the Hungarian audience on a world-class level for more than 25 years.

On June 28 at 7 p.m., Trio Mandili will perform, three young and charming Georgian ladies from a small, secluded Caucasian village. The girls gained incredible fame on the Internet, YouTube and Facebook, and became world stars in a few weeks. The “fairy tale” began on an ordinary day, when the three friends were walking in their village and started singing in a good mood. One of them recorded their song “Apareka” folk song, which has since become a world hit, with his phone, and then uploaded it to the Internet. The video dramatically changed the girls’ lives, as the song reached millions of views within two weeks. Trio Mandili is now touring all over the world, surrounded by immense love.

On June 29, Mihály Dresch, who is celebrating his 70th birthday, will arrive at the closing concert of the World Music Week with his String Quartet. The Kossuth Prize-winning artist is certainly a world-class representative of the Hungarian jazz scene, and an indispensable figure in the music history. His own special instrument, the “fuhun”, will be playing again on Sunday evening in the Garden. Another event on the closing day is the concert of Ági Szalóki, Bori Magyar and Szilvia Bognár, which was called into being by the common desire to once again.

Experience at the event the joy of singing Hungarian, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Gypsy, Sephardic Jewish, Portuguese and Spanish melodies together.

Getting Around by Aggie Reiter