Táncház 50. Half a Century of the Hungarian Táncház Movement
Proceedings of the Symposium Organized by the Institute for Musicology RCH (Hungary) and the Institute of Ethnomusicology ZRC SAZU (Slovenia) Budapest, 2023
Edited by Dániel Lipták and Pál Richter
ELTE RCH Insitute for Musicology
Budapest, 2025
ISBN 978-615-5167-66-9
In 1972, a handful of young Hungarian musicians brought instrumental folk music from the village to an urban environment, maintaining its traditional function as accompaniment for community dances by holding táncház events. In doing so, they embarked on an intensive study of authentic village music with the guidance of both village musicians and leading researchers. This turned out to be one of the most important grassroots cultural initiatives in the Eastern Bloc, and it survived various political changes without losing momentum. As táncház clubs multiplied, so did stage performances, and Hungarian folk bands soon became part of the international world music scene. All across the Hungarian language area, the last rural communities that had organically sustained these dance traditions were disappearing, and the number of source musicians was rapidly declining. At the same time, the younger generations of the táncház movement gradually relied less on folk music and dance research work. Meanwhile, university-level folk music education established at the Liszt Academy of Music has shown that these traditional repertoires and performance practices can be taught and learned in the same way as other styles.
In 2022, we marked the milestone 50th anniversary of the Hungarian folk music and dance revival movement. Many questions remain: Can this traditional music culture survive in a new environment in the long run, without the oral transmission practices and community sensibilities that shaped it over the generations? How can we describe its current transformations, and what do we predict about its future? A collaboration between Hungarian and Slovenian researchers to answer these questions led to an international symposium at the Institute for Musicology in Budapest in 2023, which has now resulted in this publication. While celebrating the progress and impact of the táncház movement, this volume also aims to open up new approaches to it and to contribute to the international discourse on folk music revivals.
Contents:
ISTVÁN PÁVAI: Urban and Rural Concepts of Táncház in Hungarian Cultural History and Adaptations in the Revival
PÁL RICHTER: Scholarly and Artistic Discourse on the Values and Aesthetics of Folk Music in 20th-Century Hungary
ANNA SZÉKELY: Traditional Culture as Personal Inspiration for the Táncház Movement
PÉTER ÁRENDÁS: What is Authentic Performance? Principles and Considerations of the Hungarian Revival of the Village String Band Tradition
NÓRA KOVÁCS: Intangible Cultural Heritage as a Vehicle of Transnational Nation-Building: The Táncház Method in the Hungarian Diaspora in Argentina
ZINA BOZZAY: Applying the Táncház Method to International Hungarian Folk Singing Teaching: Principles and Practices for Transmission in English
WERONIKA GROZDEW-KOŁACIŃSKA – JACEK JACKOWSKI: The Dom Tańca Movement in Poland: Use of Archival Sources for Research and Contemporary Musical Practice
DRAGO KUNEJ: The Early Period of the Folk Music Revival in Slovenia
MOJCA KOVAČIČ: The Folk Music Revival in Slovenia: Conceptual Frameworks of the Folk Slovenia Cultural and Ethnomusicological Society
REBEKA KUNEJ: The Echo of the Táncház Movement in Slovenia
RĂZVAN ROŞU: The Country Without Táncház: On the Monopoly of Folk Ensembles in Romania
ALINA STAN: The Camelia & Ion Motoc School of Romanian Traditional Dance in Cluj-Napoca: A Model for Preservation and Transmission
SERGIO DE LA OSSA: Folk Dance Revival Movements in Hungary and Galicia (Spain): Reflections of an Outsider Becoming an Insider
