Hagyományok Háza

Hungarian Heritage House

URL: http://heritagehouse.hu (English); http://www.hagyomanyokhaza.hu (Hungarian)

The Hungarian Heritage House, founded in 2001, is an institution established for the cultivation of the folk traditions of Central Europe's Carpathian Basin, comprising three divisions: the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, the Folklore Documentation Centre, and the Folk Arts Department. This organization and its website offer a comprehensive view of the ambitious preservation activities of the Hungarian folk music research community and the continuing education and promotion activities of affiliated individuals and organizations.

Probably the most exciting aspect of this website is its collection of databases, especially its "Folklore Documents Archive," a comprehensive collection of audio­visual recordings of "authentic folk customs from the Carpathian Basin." The data­base is still being tested and built, but the online collection plans to include material from: partner institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; private collections including those of major twentieth-century music and dance researchers György Martin, László Lajtha, and Zoltán Kallós; and the entire collection made during the Utolsó Óra project of Fonó Budai Zeneház (Fonó Music House in Buda).¹ Entries in the database document the names of the performers and collectors, instruments used, the genre, certain musical features, the place the recording was prepared, and the source location (literally, "location of validity") for the material recorded-effectively, the home village of the performers. The database is searchable by all of these parameters, in more than one language (for instance, either Hungarian or Romanian) when relevant. When complete, this online archive will comprise audio and video recordings dating from the 1950s to the twenty-first century. While most pertain to rural village settings, several were recorded in urban studios, mostly in Budapest, by rural musicians and dancers (such as those from what the English notes on this archive call the "Last Minute" project, though it is usually known as the "Last Hour" [Utolsó Óra] project). In addition to this online archive, a searchable database of the Heritage House's collection of published recordings, frequently including extensive excerpts from liner notes, provides a useful aid to researchers examining the output of the large (and still growing) number of urban performers playing various sorts of folk music in the Hungarian sphere since the emergence in the 1970s of the revival known as the táncház mozgalom (or dance-house movement).

A few linguistic, technical, and methodological notes: first, although the English home page claims that the Heritage House creates an opportunity not only for Hungarians but also for "the globalizing world to experience and understand our cul­tural heritage," this is not really a website for novices. Though brief introductions to each division of the Heritage House are provided in English and the English expla­nation of the contents of the "Folklore Documents Archive" in fact includes more details on the collections than what is provided for the Hungarian one, there are not yet many such explanations. Knowledge both of Hungarian and of the categories used in Hungarian folk music discourse are probably critical to deriving full benefit from the resources offered here. Second, accessing the audio and video material in the online archive requires Internet Explorer running on a PC. Finally, as always, "tools are bounded by methodological orientation" (Lange 2001:144), and as some of the terminology quoted above perhaps suggests ("authentic folk customs," "Last Hour project"), the endurance of a preservationist ethos in Hungarian folk music research may strike some users in the Anglo-American sphere as dated. Yet other aspects of this webpage-advertisements for staged folk dance and educational programmes in a variety of folk arts, links to affiliates like the Dance House Guild (tanchaz.hu) and the Fonó Music House and media partners like Folkradio.hu and Duna Television, along with the online archives of field recordings-show how sophisticated technical tools are used to preserve and promote those "authentic folk customs." In keeping track of folk music activities in contemporary Hungary, the website of the Hungarian Heritage House is an indispensable resource, and one that is becoming richer almost daily.

Note

1. Website of Hagyományok Háza [Hungarian Heritage House], "Folklore Documents Archive test service." http://www.hagyomanyokhaza.hu/index.php?menu=484 (accessed 24 May 2008).

Reference cited

Lange, Barbara Rose

2001 "Hypermedia and Ethnomusicology." Ethnomusicology 45/1 (Winter): 132-49.

LYNN HOOKER