Just in time for an eagerly awaited UK tour Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (A HAWK AND A HACKSAW) and a dazzling crowd of perpetrators, collaborators, comrades and magicians (mainly but not entirely THE HUN HANGÁR ENSEMBLE) have put together this delightful, fresh, nerve tingling set of tunes and dances in a handsome CD and DVD set.
The music is straight from the souls of the dispossessed, uprooted, stolen, battered, enslaved disembowelled and just plain stubborn bastards of all the mythic tribes of Jewish, Magyar, Roma, Celtic and more nameless extractions. There are traditional tunes and instruments, and there are new compositions and modern instruments just for the sake of a party. I would confidently recommend it to anyone on the straightforward principle that it’s a damn fine frolic made by some very talented people. It sounds to me like they have insider access to the roots of subterranean music of all ages.
Jeremy Barnes mainly plays accordion and drums, Heather is the Klezmer Princess on violin, doubling on cello and viola. Béla Ágoston, a hub of the Budapest folk music world offers Hungarian bagpipes, clarinet and alto sax. Ferenc Kovács impresses on trumpet and on violin. Zsolt Kurtosi plays upright bass and a rather virtuoso Balázs Unger plays some crazy cymbalon. Just hear him go on "Vajdaszentivány" - fabulous stuff. It has a hammered dulcimer/zither sound.
The speed of preparing and recording the 30 minutes of music also managed to add in late contributions form Mark Weaver (tuba), Zach Condon (trumpet, ukulele and mandolin) and Paul Collins on bouzouki. The HUN HANGÁR ENSEMBLE tracks were completed in just a week.
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As the eleven tracks unwind the mood sways between town square revelry and ancestral tears in the violin department. But either way, it’s radiant, life-affirming stuff. The mad combinations of instruments - a mariachi trumpet here, a glockenspiel there - adds to the GOGOL BORDELLO sense of grown up knowing laughter in hard times. The scale generally sounds large - it’s public music for public acclamation. Dancing is definitely called for.
It really is fine stuff and you just don’t need to worry about authenticity, appropriation, preciousness or any of that bullshit. It works because the musicians are audibly having a whale of a time and making some pots rattle. The live shows are going to set places on fire. I think I'm down to see them in a church building (may God strike me dead for wishing a conflagration upon his currently disused home)
The 20-minute DVD has people and places from Hungary and live performances from Barnes and Trost in The US. It's also lots of fun, and adds genuine insight and interest to the music CD. I usually can’t be bothered, but the sense of an ancient music living a proudly decent life, on its own terms, in a dismal contemporary world makes me very happy.
www.ahawkandahacksaw.co.uk
www.myspace.com/hunhangarensemble
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