Paksa Katalin - Németh István: Muravidéki magyar népzene (Budapest - Lendva, 2018)
A régió népzenéjéről
41 Foreword The pivotal events of the 20th century did not only reshuffle the political entities to which nations and nationalities belonged and change their everyday life in Central Europe, but also profoundly influenced the interpretation of identity determined by the mother tongue, tradition and culture. As a result of this unfavourable and complex process, attachment to the narrow or broader community has considerably changed by the early 21st century. Not infrequently, regional identity or attachment to the country began to replace the earlier strong national affiliation, and on the other side, the coherence of communities held together by ethnographic, linguistic, musical or other cultural criteria has gained significance. Though it is often relegated among the shelved values of the past, folk music is a particularly important component of our culture today, linking people and small regions and creating an identical or similar value system among them, irrespective of the fact in which country the members live, whether our sense of national identity is stagnant or weakening. This is multiply true of our region, the Carpathian Basin and Central Europe, and in it of the Hungarians. When we sing a Hungarian folksong, our union with the universal Hungarian culture is self-evident. It is, however, not necessarily only a Hungarian specificity, as intertwining, interaction and similarities can be occasionally discerned in the music of neighbouring peoples. In the light of the above thoughts the stopgap monograph of the folk music of the Mura region [Hung. Muravidék] by two outstanding Hungarian folk music researchers, Katalin Paksa and István Németh has salient importance. The professionally and chronologically thorough overview published under the aegis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is of signal importance for scholarship and everyday practice alike. From now on the frontier zone between Hungary and Slovenia, the areas of historical Zala and Vas counties now in the state of Slovenia no longer constitute a blank spot on the map of Hungarian folk music. Moreover, there is now a professionally authentic collection at the disposal of all those interested in folksongs, folksong circles, folk musicians in the Mura region and elsewhere which gives an all-round summary of the folk music of this region also relying on formerly published works of diverse nature and size. The region having been staked out only in the early 20th century and hence having no traditions of its own, its folk music displays identity or similarity with the music of
