Songs
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- country:Hungary
- style(s):World
- label:Gryllus
- type:Band
- artist posted by:Band HolddalaNap
Line up
- Alex Torres (guitar)
- Anna Gulyás (vocal)
- Árpád Vajdovich (contrabass, bass-guitar, vocal)
- Barna Gábos (kaval, ney, flautas)
- Gábor Ölvedi (percussion, vocal)
- Guszti Balogh (vocal, guitar)
- László Szlama (lute, citera, flute, vocal)
- Lídia Draskóczy (violin)
Links
The group HolddalaNap ('MoonSingsSun', or 'The Moon with the Sun') was founded by well-known and experienced Hungarian folk musicians. Their debut album Dandala was released under one of top labels of Hungary: the Gryllus Kiadó, and has been recommended to the world music album nominees at Hungarian Grammy: Fonogram award in 2015.
They were among the 10 groups who represented hungarian world music in Fono Café, the 0th day before the WOMEX 2015 in Budapest.
The leading hungarian music journal listed the album among the top releases of 2014.
“The first impression of Dandala is their collective belief in the power of playing and singing together, and the love for each ethnic musical tradition as they bring it under a common denominator, while making all of these traditions they own as they build it into their own sound. What they do in the song Hold és felhő (‘Moon and Cloud’)should be taught in a world music class. The final song on the album (Itt ülök fenn kerek mennyben ‘I sit here in Round Heaven’) which is a cover of a Transylvanian prayer, is one of the best thing what happened in the modern folk scene lately.” (Mihály Rácz, Lángológitárok)
The group brings together own poetry and essence of traditional music, they add a lot of improvisation and wonderful singing, and create their unique sound by using authentic folk instruments like hungarian lute, citera, baglama, guitar, kaval, bagpipe, zurna, violin, tappan, daf, etc.
The voices of the hungarian singer and composer of the songs, Anna Gulyás, fits very well with the voices of her roma friends: they work with two brilliant roma singers, who sang with great success also in different WOMEXs. Guszti Balogh (Vojasa) is a member of the group, and Monika Lakatos (Romengo) is guest singer of their albums: she was one of the singers in the opening ceremony of WOMEX 2015 in Budapest. It is a music borned from friendships and love, and listening them, You can fill that bombasthic positive energy. All the other members sing also, so sometimes You can listen to 8 voices on the stage!
The outcome is magical: it reaches the soul and lifts up the spirit. At the same time it makes you dance and moves you to the depth of rituals. They often make concerts with theater and dance elements. Creating new music based on ethno music for them is not only means to use motivums, elements, instruments, techniques inspired on ethno music, but more than that, to try to recreate the ritual role of the music.
The songs are often dealing with social, ecological and spiritual questions with great empathy, like the life of gipsy people, migration… The last song of their new CD is a pray for peace performed in hungarian, lovari roma, english, arabian and spanish languages.
In the last years they toured, gave concerts with great succeses in Spain, Finnland, Italy, Romania and Slovenia. Their concerts for children are also expectacular!
The next song of their first album was semifinalist in the International Songwriter Competition:
Majomkirály (The Great King Monkey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGUCSOs87fM
The group has got a very special visual background in the concerts, as You can see in the video, thanks to their painter and VJ friends.