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Picture of Bálint Sárosi

Bálint Sárosi

Bálint Sárosi (Csíkrákos, Romania, 1925) is one of the most prominent Hungarian researchers of folk music. He is a Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and received the highest distinctions awarded to musicologists: the Erkel Prize and the Széchenyi Prize. His books present comprehensive surveys of whole fields, such as instrumental folk music and “Gipsy music”. His Zenei anyanyelvünk [Our Mother Tongue of Music], (1973), was published in a new edition in 2003. His Nótáskönyv [Book of Songs], (2009) is an ample collection of further communal singing.

THE HISTORY OF THE GIPSY BAND 1904-1944

The gypsy bands with which we are familiar today began to form in the decades around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Their evolution and transformation have been steady ever since, a process without breaks or milestones. The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, offers a