Chalga is a urban folk/worldmusic band from Hungary.
These days arts and especially music are about to find their own Babel: crossing former boundaries seems to be the way for renewal. The music of Chalga is a common denominator of musical forms to which an urban listener is exposed to, so the best approach would be to call it “urban folk”. Recycled tradition – folk music out of context, mainly inspired by traditional music, although not being similar to it. It is not similar, because folk music is only an inspiration: the motifs and melodies may recall the original structures, but the orchestration is out of style, contains heavy influences of jazz and rock, and a great amount of good taste when mixing all the ingredients.
The ars poetica of the band is to bring the different musical traditions and the big city life to a balance, and find harmony within the effects of cosmopolitan lifestyle. The title Sabir wasn’t a random choice for the band’s debut CD in 2006, it is a metaphor of their music. Sabir or “lingua franca” was the common language used in the medieval ages for communication trough the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Mainly used by sailors, merchants and travellers this effective means for communication contained elements from Persian, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan and Arabic.
Music of Chalga clears up the Babel of world-music as sabir did amongst the medieval languages: it reuses only those elements which are inevitable for accurate communication, presenting only those musical forms which is found to be significant. It is not dance music (even if “chalga” means Bulgarian folk-inspired urban wedding music), and it could hardly be dance music for western audience, since it uses odd rhythms. In spite of being quite dashing and swinging, it is something you would listen to as well. It is an intellectual music, with fixed musical structures and some improvisation, emphasizing the playful side of music. Their instruments include Arabic and African percussions, guitar, fiddle, saxophone, bass, reusing popular and less known motifs from the Bulgarian, Macedonian, Kurdish, Cretan, Laz, Turkish, Tschango and Hungarian folk heritage.
The band is made up of Hungarian professionals, who earned reputation in such well-known bands like Makám, Ghymes, Folkestra, Arasinda, Borago and Nox.
