Buda Folk Band

This programme is held in Hungarian.

On the folk and world music scene, Buda Folk Band, considered one of the best and most popular Hungarian bands of the 2010s, returned in 2026 after an eight-year creative hiatus. And after the summer concerts, in December they will give their last Budapest concert of the year at the House of Music.

Although Buda Folk Band went on an eight-year creative break, the signs of their return were already noticeable last year. The band accepted an invitation from the Méra World Music Festival, which was celebrating the tenth anniversary of its founding. It was particularly important for the organizers that, on the occasion of the jubilee, the group that had once opened the now internationally renowned and highly successful festival should take the stage again. 

The lives of the members of Buda Folk Band, formed in 2007, have been permeated by the love of Hungarian folk music and folk traditions since childhood, which is not all that surprising, since in the family background of several of them stand such decisive role models as Sándor Csoóri, former founder of the ensemble Muzsikás, or Péter Éri, who are (also) known as the authors of many popular folk-music-inspired arrangements and hits. In the heroic age of the táncház movement there was still no institutionalized folk music education, so the musicians of newly formed bands almost all came from different genres. Before they were swept away by authentic folk music, many pursued classical music studies, while others approached from the direction of beat music. Soma Salamon, the band’s accordionist, described this phenomenon quite aptly in an earlier interview with him: “I’d be curious what the members of the Rolling Stones would say if they knew that with their music they actually inspired an entire táncház movement, even if only indirectly.” By contrast, for the musicians of Buda Folk Band, the presence of authentic folk music in urban culture is already natural. Accordingly, among the members we find a cultural and dance anthropologist, a performing artist who graduated from the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and a folk music researcher as well. However, alongside Hungarian folk music they neither can nor wish to exempt themselves from the influence of other genres; these musical motifs, rhythms and characteristic stylistic features, complemented by the distinctive instrumentation of folk instruments found in the Carpathian Basin, together create the band’s sweeping momentum and unique sound. In terms of its melodic world, Buda Folk Band’s music preserves the turns characteristic of Hungarian folk music, while its structure and style adapt to the present age in a groundbreaking way. Their first album, “Sűrű Vándor,” was released in 2011, the second in the autumn of 2013 under the title “Magyar Világi Népzene” (“Hungarian Secular Folk Music”). This latter album made it onto the prestigious World Music Charts Europe list in January 2014 and went all the way up to second place. Their third album, “Saját Gyűjtés” (“Own Collection”), can safely be said to be a milestone in the field of Hungarian folk and world music. According to their own musical self-definition – as the title of their second album also suggests – they play “secular” folk music. This term is generally known more as the opposite of sacred, church-themed art, and is less associated with the conceptual sphere of folk or world music. In Buda Folk Band’s interpretation, however, Hungarian folk music, since it also bears the imprint of the cultural influences of neighboring peoples, can in itself already be designated as world music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBve7Q5sA7U