Magyar Hírek, 1983 (36. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1983-10-15 / 21. szám
WHICH WAY FOR HUNGARIAN ROCK? As the long, exceptionally hot summer draws to a close and with it, the round of concerts and tours, this seems as good a time as any to take stock of the rock scene in Hungary now. In a word: static. Even the big names who visited us this spring and summer say it all: Johnny Cash, Nazareth, Santana and Manfred Mann. While their individual concerts were not to be carped at — Manfred Mann’s was truly magnificent —the feeling is one of marking time, of being in the early seventies. ( At the end of the sixties and in the early seventies much promise was held out by groups such as Bergendy, Omega, Syrius and, above all, Jllcs. Age has caught up with this generation of musicians and there is as yet no sign of a takeover by young and “hungry” groups. True, Omega still sell out their concerts, annually introducing fourteen year-olds to the joys of dry fog, flung-back heads and lyrics of genial inanity. True, many of the leading lights of the old generation are still active, some, in particular Gábor Presser, producing fine music. Yet the over-all feeling is one of a void, of the music as style with little communicative value to the people producing and listening to it. Not that this is unusual for rock music anywhere, it just seems to be taking longer here for the void to be filled. In the meantime the biggest crowd drawers the heavy metal groups, Edda, East and Karthago, all greatly influenced by AC/DC. Their audience is as distinct as a heavy metal audience anywhere in Europe. (Predominantly young male working class, leatherjacketed tight jeaned, Cuban-heeled boots and long-haired, they form one of the more recognizable Hungarian youth sub-cultures.) The music too is much the same as elsewhere, ranging from boastful threats to what the girl is going to go through tonight to ballads in which birds, volcanoes and snow are the dominant images. Four lines of lyric and straight into the hook, all at inaxitmun volume. Another of the throwbacks, Hungária, put on concerts which tended to be costume dramas from the summer of 1060. They brought out a surprisingly good album, “Hotel Menthol”, which was a fresh and witty celebration of the never-never land found in the lyrics of classic 1950s rock. (Incidentally this album is available in an English version, too.) It parodied itself, just as the songs it was parodying parodied themselves. The group has since split up, presumably exhausted after a fine, final fling. KFT are still basking in the aftermath of a British tour (they opened for The Who.) Despite fine musicianship and impeccable arrangements, there is a feeling still of potential rather than achievement. (Their records too tend to avoid risks.) Of the current groups they could well be the one to do something really interesting. Its not that something new is not being tried. There has been a recent upsurge of interest in country music but listening to the country groups one is again conscious of style rather than substance. (In any case, the music has a minority appeal: here Johnny Cash played to a half-empty hall.) Reggae has finally arrived, popularized first of all by Boney M, which only proves how tenuous the link is between a non-British or American audience with black music. Still, the style is being explored with some success even at the pop level. (Presser wrote a marvellous single for Klári Katona called ‘Mégnem’ around a reggae beat.) All in all then, Hungarian rock is waiting for something to happen. And if it does it could well come from punk, another style which is a fairly recent arrival. Not as abrasive let alone as nihilistic as their Western counterparts, it is the punk groups who seem most in tune with their audiences at the moment. They have either art-college (Bizottság - The Committee) or working class (Kontroll Csoport — Control Group) connections. Their lyrics can too often be some form of primal t herapy on the part of the writer/singer but at the moment, the punk groups are catching the mood and the language of the young in a wav that the established groups have forgotten how to. The most positive. feature now is that there is a well established Budapest circuit based on clubs at various colleges and local Culture Centres. (The Közgáz Klub, run by students of the University of Economics in Budapest, is the showplace for new, especially punk groups.) Groups are getting younger too, and on their part at least, the desire to take risks musically is there. It may be a void right now, but it could be the false ealin before Hungarian rock finds itself again and takes us by storm. PETER DOHERTY The abyss seems to be almost unbridgeable. Music is an auditive art, a continuity of sounds in time; painting and photography are visual, their dimension is space and not time — how then could one be translated into the language of the other? And yet pa Intel’s and photographers are always tempted to try the impossible, to arrest live music with a brush or camera, something that cannot be done to perfection even with records, or tapes, as most real ooncertgoers profess. How could even the most, perfect radio performance reflect the tense moment, when one takes one’s seat in the concert hall, when the turning of programme pages or scores, which clears the air slowly dies down, when the hum of the turned pages, reminiscent of the buzz of insect wings, stops, when it seems people even breathe more slowly, while the conductor makes his way across the stage to his rostrum. Musical performance or the dance, which enthralls painters even more, since it is itself a spectacle, a picture come to life, seized the imagination of the impressionists in the first place. When one contemplates a Degas in a museum, one experiences a miracle: the moment tom from the continuity of time, from the three dimensions of space, presents the whole instead of a detail, the total, the totality instead of a frame without any attempt by the artist to emphasise his symbolism to the detriment of his naturalism. László Vámos also succeeds in this feat—by using the series principle so favoured by contemporary painting, and using it in its proper place. On one picture Giuseppe Patanó is immersed in thought, his gaze burns, turned inward, like that of the Apollo torso in Rilke’s poem, apparently oblivious of time and place. On another he already came, to broke out of himself, and is ready to perform the role of the conductor, his eyes fixed on the first line of the violinists, he seems to hypnotize them. On the third picture of the tryptych he is looking into the distance above the heads of musicians, with his aims and baton held high, and the music of Mozart is reborn — I nearly wrote in our hearing. László Vámos: „under tne spell ci music” Universal Verlag, Bielefeld, 1983, 213 pp. Preface by Antal Doráti The pictures awaken memories. A series of them bring to life an evening many years ago, when I sat in the auditorium of the Erkel Theatre, tense, and full of expectation, gazing at the aged and frail Stravinsky, leaning on his walking stick, climbing up to the rostrum with difficulty, and then, after a short pause, full of meaning, the Firebird Suite began, and the bent old man rose in height, seemed to grow into a giant, like Velasquez standing at his easel, palette in hand, on Picasso’s Las Meninas. László Vámos took the pictures of the album between 1060 and 1982. They are of composers, conductoi-s, singers, pianists, violinists, opera and ballet performances. What artists, what performances! Looking only at the front of the album there are Casals, Doráti,Rubinstein, Richter, Britten, Menuhin, and many more great artists. The book is the memoirs of a humble artist living under the spell of music, always subordinating himself, and his camera to the job. This is the source of his great virtue that goes above and beyond a cultured eye and perfect technique. Awakening memories, offering an experience where memory is lacking, it becomes the diary of the viewer. Experience, of course, not just like that, in general, floating in the lilac mist of jxietic generalization. The pictures presenting conductors, for instance, are as good as an analysis. They tell clearly how Ansermet does it, and how differently Charles Munch works. Rubinstein making music with archly glistening eyes, with liberated joy, is one of the extremes, and as the pictures show, Richter, putting his whole being into the scales, sitting at the piano, ready to whip his whole fate into some possibly fatal adventure is the other. Aman, who —as Attila József said—is ready to put his soul at risk, to go as far as hell if need be to do his best. The album of László Vámos adventuring between the imaginable and possible extremes of art is an experience entrancing and thrilling for the eyes and the mind alike, and at the same time, a gangway one can safely walk, spanning the seemingly unbridgeable abyss. CSABA SÍK 30
