Ferenc Kiss, a Prima Award-winning folk musician, composer, and founder of the Etnofon Label, has passed away. A former member of the bands Vízöntő and Kolinda, Kiss died at the age of 70 on Tuesday after a long illness, as confirmed by Etnofon on Thursday to MTI.
Born on June 27, 1954, in Debrecen, Kiss came from a family of musicians, picking up the violin early in life. His family moved to Budapest in the mid-1960s, where he completed high school at the II. Rákóczi Ferenc Gymnasium, graduating in 1973. He earned his degree in 1978 from the Hungarian-Folklore Department of Eötvös Loránd University, all the while continuing to play music.
In the year of his graduation, 1973, the first public “dance house” event was held in Budapest, and the following year Kiss joined the Vízöntő band, which also accompanied the Novák Ferenc ensemble, the Bihari János Dance Ensemble.
Kiss played with Vízöntő for twenty years and also joined the legendary Kolinda band in 1975, though he later returned to Vízöntő, with whom he achieved great success in Western Europe.
In 1992, leveraging new market opportunities and Western experiences, he founded Etnofon, the first independent Hungarian folk music label. The label focuses on recording, archiving, publishing, and distributing both traditional folk music and contemporary, alternative works inspired by folk traditions. Its work plays a vital cultural role by publishing archival recordings of various ethnicities and Hungarian minorities abroad, and it has since expanded into book publishing.
Kiss frequently traveled to collect folk music in the Carpathian region, where he encountered the remaining traces of archaic klezmer styles. He sought to preserve this authentic klezmer sound through the Odessa Klezmer Band, which he founded in 1998, releasing a joint album with the group.
As a composer, Kiss represented a distinctive, bold direction, incorporating elements of Hungarian folklore into a new compositional system. Alongside modern electronics, he gave great importance to acoustic folk instruments and traditional playing and ornamentation techniques.
His close connection with other art forms, such as dance, theater, and film, was evident in all his work. He composed music for numerous animation and feature films, theatrical productions, and contemporary dance performances. His work was characterized by a deep knowledge of peasant music and traditional performance techniques, combined with a quest for new, innovative sounds.
Kiss considered his encounters with Tamás Cseh and Imre Makovecz to be key moments in his life. Cseh recorded his album ‘Hungarian Military Songs and Ballads from the 20th Century’ in the Etnofon studio, and his last albums were also recorded there. Kiss played the violin and hurdy-gurdy on these recordings, and he produced the memorial album ‘You Came to Mind – A Tribute to Tamás Cseh’, which was performed live at the “zero day” of the 2010 Sziget Festival.
Kiss met Makovecz during the 1992 World Expo in Seville, where he won the competition to compose the music for the Hungarian pavilion, designed by Makovecz. Kiss paid tribute to Makovecz with the animated film ‘On His World’s Path, Hateha!’, directed by Kati Egely in 2014, for which he was the producer, writer, and composer. He dedicated the film to Makovecz at his 60th birthday concert.
From 2012 until his death, Kiss was the founder and artistic director of the Héttorony Festival, which honors Makovecz’s legacy and extends beyond national borders. In 2015, he was the first recipient of the Makovecz Award.
In 2021, Kiss published his book ‘Kötelékek’ (Ties), which chronicles the history of the bands Vízöntő and Kolinda, through Etnofon.
He also sought to introduce children to the world of folk music with his 2012 publication ‘Papó’s Music School’, which included his own text and a CD. His interactive performances for children also drew on the enduring elements of folk culture.
Kiss’s musical versatility required him to use many instruments, leading to a collection of over 100 instruments, most of which were authentic folk instruments.
Kiss received numerous awards throughout his life, including the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 2002, the Bartók Béla Memorial Award from the Hungarian Art Foundation in 2006, the Prima Award for Hungarian Folk Art and Public Education in 2013, and the Martin György Award in 2018.
Photo: kultura.hu
