Knock-Out unplugged and Transylvanian MagyaRock II. book launch

This programme is held in Hungarian.

Csaba Zilahi’s indispensable music history volume Erdélyi Magyarock 1970–2010 II., published in 2025 – like the first part – will also be presented in the House of Music’s Pop Culture Club Library, in the presence of the author. Just as the book launch of the first volume in 2022 was accompanied by a live musical illustration with the participation of the band Metropol, this time there will also be a concert: the Cluj-based KnockOut will give an unplugged performance, and they will even have a special guest, Csaba “Csabcsi” Cserey, one of Romania’s best-known drummers.

Erdélyi MagyaRock 1970–2010 II.
Like the first volume, this second one also deals with the first four decades of the history of Hungarian light music in Transylvania. Digging a bit deeper and broadening the genre boundaries, we can get to know the stories of more than a hundred Transylvanian pop, rock and folk bands or soloists, illustrated with many photographs and life-path interviews. What’s more, a little jazz has also found its place in the volume. Who were the members of the Great Generation, those who, after beat and folk music, discovered early music and táncház music for the joy of themselves and their generation? Who entertained the audiences of small pubs and large festivals in Oradea, Târgu Mureș, Cluj and other Transylvanian towns? The answers can be found in Erdélyi MagyaRock 1970–2010 II, which, together with the first volume, summarizes the history of Transylvanian Hungarian popular music in a pioneering way.

KnockOut and Csaba “Csabcsi” Cserey
Thirty-three years is not a short time. Especially for a Transylvanian Hungarian band whose roots reach back to the 1980s. The founder and leader of the Cluj-based KnockOut, József “Yogi” Lénárd, graduated from “rock school” in Rival, Trans Express, then Compact B. Until one fine day he stopped Csaba Zilahi, the music editor of Cluj Radio, on the street: “Hi Csaba, I’ve written a song for Hungarian rockers, in Hungarian, with a new band. Would you premiere it on the radio?” – “If it’s a good song, with pleasure!” This is how “Mit hoz a holnap?” (“What Will Tomorrow Bring?”) was first broadcast. And it indeed brought many good songs and countless unforgettable experiences. To mention only the most important: a joint tour with Hobo Blues Band, twice with Moby Dick, concerts all over Transylvania, a tour in Sweden, and a performance in London. 
On this packed evening KnockOut will give an unplugged concert in the House of Music’s Pop Culture Club Library, where one of the best-known and most popular bands of the Transylvanian Hungarian rock scene will now be joined by Csaba “Csabcsi” Cserey (1958), one of Romania’s most renowned drummers, who not only played in countless formations, but between 1989 and 2023 also played in the orchestra of the Satu Mare Theatre, and has performed with the country’s most important jazz musicians. In recent years he has been giving “relaxation sound baths” in Cluj, and through drumming combined with reflexology he has been helping children with Down syndrome, autism and mental disabilities. In his autobiographical volume he writes: “My life is rhythm, drums, melody. And without these there is no life. (…) I have fitted drumming together with theatre, with life, with psychology.”

Both KnockOut and this versatile artist feature in Csaba Zilahi’s indispensable book Erdélyi Magyarock II, published last year, which brings together the stories, life-path interviews and archival photos of more than 100 Transylvanian beat, pop, folk and jazz bands, and which will also be presented at the event.