'I was even lucky enough to be introduced to and record one of Zoltan Kodaly's singers in Hungary - she sang us a Hungarian version of 'The Cruel Mother' (unaccompanied, as it happens)'

So in fact you didn't actually 'record' her yourself then? See, sometimes it is worth asking a question or two.

1968, so a couple of years after you got interested in folk and probably while you were still in the Critics Group run by MacColl. One of the few of that generation who can remember the 60s, and no doubt much the better for it!

We guessed either MacColl or Lloyd might come into the story as both are famous for not leaving the CP after the Russian invasion of Hungary. Assuming Budapest Radio would have been state run.


Wiki says this about Hungarian music at the time:

For the first half of the 20th century, Bartók and Kodály were potent symbols for a generation of composers, especially Kodály. Starting in about 1947, a revival in folk choir music began, ended as an honest force by 1950, when state-run art became dominant with the rise of Communism. Under Communism, "commitment and ideological affiliation (were) measured by the musical style of a composer; the ignominious adjectives 'formalistic' and 'cosmopolitan' gain currency ... (and the proper Hungarian style was) identified with the major mode, the classical aria, rondo or sonata form, the chord sequences distilled" from Kodály's works.