{"id":1928,"date":"2012-04-13T01:21:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T23:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martasebestyen.com\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2020-10-22T16:08:15","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:08:15","slug":"biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.martasebestyen.com\/en\/biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Bio"},"content":{"rendered":"

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UNESCO Artist for Peace, member of the Hungarian Art Academy<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"I have been living under the spell of folksongs ever since I was a young child. First these were the ones I heard my mother sing, later the folk music that opened up before me like a new world. I was mesmerized by the ancient voices \u2013 primarily the collections of Zolt\u00e1n Kall\u00f3s, full of marvelous texts and melodies. It is here I would like to thank Uncle Zolt\u00e1n for his mentorship, love, personal and professional help \u2013 I was always able to count on these. On my own folksong collecting fieldtrips I was able to experience the overwhelming human sensation of getting in touch with the ageless messages of bygone times. Often I felt I was able to shake hands with Balassi or Pet\u0151fi. (Would our S\u00e1ndor not be happy to hear that his love poem You Cannot Forbid a Flower \u2013 No. 10 in this collection \u2013 has become a folksong? Well, this is the way Hungarian hearts feel about the matter.) As K\u00f6lcsey had remarked in 1826: \u201cThe ignition sparks of true national poetry must be sought in the common folksong.\u201d According to J\u00f3kai \u201cin Hungary it is the literary salon that learned from the wild meadow\u201d \u2013 which, according to Kod\u00e1ly is \u201ceven truer in the case of music, because music had even less of a written tradition than literature.\u201d Living in the noise of today\u2019s flat and disgraceful medium of Hungarian language use, we can and ought to learn even more from the wild meadows! What a pleasure it is to go plucking flowers in this manifold, colorful field! The enthusiasm of the former middle school girl, M\u00e1rta Sebesty\u00e9n (who, by the way, must have seemed to be off her rocker!) got turned into a life-long passion, a real profession. I owe thanks to a great many people for this: My parents, my friends, my colleagues, the scholarly fieldworkers and collectors, anonymous ancestors and the still living village singers who have been the creators, the transmitters and guardians of this marvelous poetry! For this today is an organic part of my life, my daily source of joy, and my comfort when I am in trouble. I sincerely wish that it should be the same for you, my kind listeners!<\/p>\n

Awards and Acknowledgements<\/strong><\/p>\n