HORTOBAGYI, LASZLO

László Hortobágyi is a man of paradoxes. He has been described as a bearer of the archaic musical tradition as well as manipulator of futuristic sound worlds. The ingredients of his compositions include both ancient magic and future technologies as well as traditional knowledge and seeming fantastic visions of virtual realities.

All of Hortobágyi's productions are musical travels in time, through centuries or even epochs of human evolution. They bring elements of space and time that are seemingly distant from each other together into one musical realm. Such is also the case with ?Memesis". Meme is an idea that is passed on from one generation to the next - the cultural equivalent to the gene as a basic element of biological heritage.

The primordial soup of the Mem is human culture. In it ideas are reproduced in a succession of brains just like genes are generated and passed on from nucleus to nucleus. Communication is a kind of mating and life is a process of multiplying information. Mem combines memory and mimesis (imitation). Imitation, copying, sampling - these are cultural techniques determining our life with increasing speed.

More precisely, with the speed of transferring electronic data. Memragas are hybrid crossovers of complementary structures put together in a very intelligent way. Their nuclei carry the memory not only of one but at least of two musical cultures - centuries old: one is the polyphonic European, the grammar of which has been formulated simultaneously with the building of the Gothic cathedrals - the other - beginning almost at the same time - is the polyrhythmic tradition of India. I

László Hortobágyi's mind these cross cultures acquire a new kind of quality: that of a mutation triggered by the technology of sampling .Whether the Memragas will mature to a musical reality of the 21st century can only be heard by you following László Hortobágyi on this CD into his 21st century.

Or you listen to his other CDs on the Erdenklang Label: "Traditional Music Of Amygdala" (1991); "The Arcadian Collection" (1994); "Fomal-Hoot al-Ganoubi" (1994); "6th All-India Music Conference" (1995); "Terra Dei" (1996). Peter Pannke, excerpts from the booklet translated by Cristian Salvesen & Ieva Gaidulis.