Paksa Katalin - Németh István: Muravidéki magyar népzene (Budapest - Lendva, 2018)
A régió népzenéjéről
46 MURAVIDÉK! MAGYAR NÉPZENE cross the borders, which got normalized with the change of the political system. This situation evidently exerted an influence upon the state of traditional culture. In Hungary in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s there was intensive folk music collecting work. As a result, for example, match-making songs were published from 107 villages of Zala county in the “Collection of Hungarian Folk Music” volume IV, while none could be presented from then Yugoslavian parts of the county as researchers were not allowed to collect there. A special permit was needed even to enter the “border zone”, the villages in Hungary but close to the border. The Hungarian peasants were forced to join agricultural cooperatives, which resulted in the radical transformation of their way of living, with a part of the population, mainly the young people trying to find work in the cities. The Magyars in the Mura region, it seems, preserved their communal life and concomitantly their folk music much longer. “We would come together a lot, then we would go singing all along the village,” an old informant said in 1998. The isolation of minority status also supported the conservation of tradition. But the way of life also changed gradually and the living standards rose higher than in Hungary. The first thing that positively struck us during our field trip in 1998 was the richness of the local dialect, the pliant musicality, “archaism” of the diphthongs, as well as finding companies of friends who could sing because they were in the habit of singing together. At the same time it was surprising to find that chatting, singing in the villages often took place in up-to-date kitchens with hot/cold running water and an exhaust fan, and when the singer failed to remember something, he/she asked the friends on the phone. At that time it was a rarity in small Hungarian villages. We present the results of our Mura region collection with the help of 210 scores. Their sequence was determined by both ethnographic and ethnomusicological criteria. The first group (1-61) contains tunes tied to certain occasions and the reason why they are at the head is their higher rate in the repertoire than elsewhere, which is specific to the Mura region. Occasional tunes Tunes tied to calendar customs (1-26) Earlier, peasant society measured time by the succession of calendar feasts. Most feasts are in the winter season in the Mura region - like everywhere - when work stops in the fields. Lucázás or kotyoläs on St. Lucy’s day is connected to the incantation of plenty and fertility, a custom known in north-western Transdanubia and the western strip of Upper Hungary. We found it as a living practice in the Mura region in 1998, performed by schoolboys in Advent, on St. Lucy’s day (13th December) so that brooders should sit in their nests, hens should lay lots of eggs and the family should be in wealth. The tune of lucázás built of twin-bar motifs similarly to children’s songs is characterized by archaic
