Laszlo Hortobagyi - 6th All-India Music Conference [1990]

László Hortobágyi's music is fiction and reality at the same time. He creates musical worlds in which we can rediscover ourselves, just to forget ourselves all over again. The essence of his music is that the 20th century was not culturally influenced by the Occident, but from the Orient instead.

Just imagine that the Western and Asian polyphony had united, such as, for example, baroque organ music with phrases of Indian Ragas. A harpsichord player performing Northern Indian sitar music on his polyphonic instrument supported by a psychedelic reggae bass. Or an orthodox Slavic church choir was to sing in a classic Indian "Dhrupad" style, in the course of which repetitive gamelan music utilized compositions of Indian ragas during an electronic rock concert in Java........

Specific to this album is his unification of the music from this fictitous 20th century with the classic Indian music culture. The meticulously listed information in the booklet concerning the "Indian Music Conferences" - the first was to have taken place in the year 1916 - reads like an encyclopedia about councils that continued for years. The artist allows the "encyclicals" to flow into his music. All of this may well sound "unreal", but does the culture in the West have any other chance than to make use of the sources of this advanced civilization? "Cultures that the West has destroyed over hundreds of years and is still destroying"? (Hortobágyi)

He is pursuing these questions in the institute he founded in 1980 in Budapest, the "Gáyan Uttejak Society", which is equipped with a unique Indian and Asian music archive. Not belonging to any real genre, this music should transport our fantasy to more exciting cultural fusions in virtual realities. This music is an exciting challenge for the musical scientist; and a drug for those that want to relax.

                                

                                                                              Enjoy!