The following is an updated and corrected version of a piece I posted last July. This uniquely gifted and remarkably versatile guitarist and composer has spent much of his career in Budapest’s thriving musical “underground” and is only now making waves outside of his native Hungary. My goal here is to introduce the world to one of Hungary’s best-kept secrets, the guitar worlds of János Bujdosó. My warmest thanks to Noémi Hamza, my spirit guide to Mr. Bujdosó and his music and the “spiritual cheerleader” I reference below.
Hungarian guitarist and composer János Bujdosó (pronounced Yan-osh Bwe-doash) is as restless as he is enigmatic.
His music is first and foremost jazz. But it is always informed by something else, too: rock, metal, pop, world, European folk, whatever. The shape-shifting amalgam can also be as maddening as it is enticing. There is a dark sense of humor in his titles and even in the songs themselves. There is also a deep sense of cynicism at play – which may well have factored in not only the appeal of his music to fans – and this listener – but to his lack of acceptance at home and abroad.
Bujdosó’s music has been described as “Byzantine surf jazz,” which only scratches at the surface. And is, so typically, reductive. After what is now a quarter century of recorded music, Bujdosó is hardly the sum of his parts. He has long flourished in what is known as Hungary’s musical “underground,” although he has long written much for Hungarian film and television.
To be clear, the American “underground” scene, which probably doesn’t exist anymore, is quite different from the Hungarian “underground” scene. In America, you were “underground” if you weren’t signed to a major or even a boutique label and you recorded and issued music on your own – much as bandleader Sun Ra did for many years. In Hungary, you are “underground” if you are not funded by the State-sponsored record companies.
For much of his career, János Bujdosó (b. 1975) has funded much of his own music, likely raising money for his recordings by his work in film and television, gigging for others or crowd-sourcing his fans and followers. Given his iconoclastic charge down his own path and the product of many overtly non-Hungarian influences, coupled with the occasional social and political commentary of his work, particularly in his song titles, it’s little wonder that the guitarist and composer has yet to appeal to the State.
Bujdosó is, on the other hand, a remarkably talented, versatile and interesting guitarist who seemingly never settles on one particular sound, voice or style for very long. To these ears, he seems greatly influenced by New York’s thriving downtown scene of the eighties and nineties. Think guitarists Marc Ribot, Nicky Skopelitis and Ronnie Drayton and player/pioneers like Wayne Horvitz, Tim Berne and John Zorn. (Guitarist Bill Frisell was – and remains – a significant player in that scene, but he doesn’t seem, in sound or style, to have much influenced Bujdosó.)
There are even glimmers here and there of Miles-era Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas as well.
And whether or not it’s in his nature, awareness or consciousness, Bujdosó will even occasionally conjure memories of such Hungarian jazz guitarists as Elek Bacsik, Attilla Zoller and Gábor Szabó. It is Bujdosó’s connection to Szabó, however, that initially brought him to my attention, introducing me to a guitarist that is – as of this writing – barely known outside of his Budapest home.
Until recently, there were only flickers of Szabo’s influence in János Bujdosó’s recordings. Then, on what would have been Szabó’s 88th birthday last year, Bujdosó released a video performance of one of Szabó’s signature pieces, “Mizrab” (more on that later).
I was subsequently alerted to several of Bujdosó’s earlier recordings by a mutual correspondent who is as much of a fan of the younger Hungarian guitarist as a spiritual, if not actual, cheerleader. These genuinely ear-opening recordings are not much known outside of Hungary (possibly even Budapest) but showcase a fascinating – and, sometimes, frustrating – guitarist and composer in three phases of a career that – here – span over a period of about a dozen and a half years.
János Bujdosó is a huge talent well deserving of much wider recognition.
János Bujdosó initially got his start as a teenager in the punk-metal band Adam 30. But the guitarist made his first most notable musical appearances as guitarist in the avant-jazz band Pop Ivan. Formed in 1997 as a quintet, Pop Ivan released two records, the first being Hospital Hungary (2002) with Bujdosó (as Pava Ivan Tzigan), László Horváth (as Soda Roman) and Ferenc Kovács Royal (as Frank O’liva) on trumpet, Szabolcs Vereb (as Haber Japan) on tenor sax Nándor Hevesi (as Pumi Lemonade) on electric bass and Viktor Horváth (as Trixi Superdark) on drums.
If Frank Zappa and John Zorn were to have a musical baby, Pop Ivan is probably what it would sound like. The titles alone make it worth investigating, though: “Fear is Dining, With Gusto,” “Karate Poker,” “Tales for Cruel People” and the brilliant “Reality Wear a Thousand Cloaks” [sic].
After a lengthy hiatus, the “Hungarian apostles of controlled chaos” returned in 2008 for one last time with Dreamhunting. The greatly expanded version of the group (without drummer Horváth) also added Abbas Murad (trombone), Gábor Lukács (alto saxophone), Zsolt Takács (tuba), Győző Mogyoró (percussion) and Csaba Németh and András Halmos (drums).
Titles included “Hit Me Mummy!,” “Adult Kid Comes Soon” and “Hymn for Sale” as well as the more ambient pieces, “Trei Culori,” “A szellemek a házat éjjel kifosztják (The Ghosts Rensack the House At Night)” and “Kinizsi Párizsa” (above).
Blood Hit Parade (2007)
Chakra Hacker is an invigorating jazz sextet formed in 2004 as a showcase for János Bujdosó’s music with Bujdosó on guitar, Abbas Murad on trombone, Gábor Weisz on saxophone, András Szőnyi on keyboards, Nándor Hevesi on bass guitar and András Halmos on drums (drummer Hunor G. Szabó was attached to the group at one point as well).
This remarkably versatile and exciting assemblage – one senses they put on one hell of a good live show – seems to have recorded only two albums, Demo for Girls in 2005, and this one in 2007. Blood Hit Parade is, however, the group’s only full-length album readily available on most streaming services – but it is well worth checking out.
Despite the album’s dramatically downbeat title and a truly creepy-clown cover (where are the guy’s hands?), Blood Hit Parade is an often festive journey into rhythmic electric jazz. Dark undertones suggesting something ominous behind it all aside, this is musical storytelling at its best. A coterie of guest players enhance the original line up and the result is an often effervescent set: one that has the aural drama of a good soundtrack but the appeal of superb modern jazz.
Album opener “Bondage of Buildings” is an intricately-colored mash-up of Santana, Marc Ribot and the Jazz Passengers that gets some fiery soloing from Abbas on trombone and Bujdosó on guitar as well as some nice Latin seasoning from the rhythm section (András Szönyi offers gorgeously subtle shades on organ). It’s a hint of what lies ahead. “Bondage” is, perhaps, the closest Chakra Hacker ever had to a theme song; indeed, it sets the tone for the album and serves as a declaration of principles for the group.
Other highlights here include the title track, a lovely Latinate that beautifully showcases Bujdosó on acoustic guitar (witness “The Wedding Ghost” for the many ways Bujdosó can shred an electric guitar) and the folk-like dervish “Highest Garden in Paradise” (beautifully aided by Ádám Jávorkai on viola), a performance that would certainly appeal to Dreams-era Gabor Szabo fans.
The last third of the record unfortunately loses the steam of invention heard elsewhere, making the record feel a little longer than it needs to be. It’s here where the debt to the Downtown scene of the eighties and nineties begins to feel a bit too weighty.
Only the tracks where some imaginative musical mash-ups and exciting changes stand out. These include “Cause I Cannot Sleep” (imagine a meeting of John Zorn and Carlos Santana), “Lotto Rozalli” (picture Duane Eddy and Marc Ribot guesting on Bill Laswell’s Imaginary Cuba) and the reggae-inflected “Lazy Memories” (think of Kai Winding and John Lurie joining forces in some Ska band, of all things).
If the title alone is not enough to pique curiosity in Blood Hit Parade, then the samples provided here will surely whet the appetite. Chakra Hacker deserved more attention than the small cult that undoubtedly worships the band and its all-too little body of truly compelling work ever got. There’s really good music here.
Gold For Leslie (2012)
János Bujdosó launched the Bujdosó Trio in the winter of 2011 with Árpád Vajdovich on bass and Csaba Németh (later András Mohay) on drums and percussion. Band members were all veterans of Hungary’s alternative/world music scene and the trio purportedly became one of the most popular club acts in Budapest.
“Though basically acoustic,” according to copy on the Budapest Music Center’s website, the trio “is spiced by finely measured psychedelic effects and tastes of movie soundtracks, while the sound scratches sometimes like New York avant-garde (John Zorn, Marc Ribot). The result of all these influences is a special colour on the international world-music palette.” A fair point.
The group’s first recording, Gold For Leslie, is musically more expansive than Bujdosó’s previous forays, tending more toward a “world music” sound than before. One senses the significant influence of Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos and traces of Pat Metheny as well.
While the flavors are more exotic, though, this may well be the one album to appreciate Bujdosó’s wide-ranging guitar prowess. He tends to stick to the acoustic guitar throughout, but there is enough imagination in this trio to make it feel positively electric. It’s fusion of the first order.
Bujdosó is an absolutely spellbinding guitarist, especially as evidenced here. But his compositions are an essential part of weaving that spell. Take, for example, the haunting “Las Ruinas Circulares”(presumably named for the Jorge Luis Borges short story), the curiously-titled “The Tiger of Babel” or “Zuhatag Sor” (with Vajdovich on arco bass). Each traverses paths of dark and light with the drama all great musical storytellers possess. Indeed, Bujdosó is as thoughtful a composer as he is a musician.
The guitarist revisits his terrific “Highest Garden in Paradise” here, imbuing this Hungarian folk dance with the fire and inspiration of Dreams-era Gábor Szabó as though fueled instead by Szabó’s aide de camp during that period, Jimmy Stewart. As advertised, this “Garden” is more acoustic than the Blood Hit Parade version but no less visceral or imaginative.
Other highlights include the disc’s opener, the traditional Turkish Greek dance “Salasana,” and its closer, the Szabó-esque “Guarantee of Quasi.” The ironically-titled “Quasi” is a 10-minute slow burn that has the haunted and haunting quality of Szabó’s much briefer “Divided City.” It is notably more electric than anything else on Gold For Leslie and caps off with eerie electronics that make this listener wonder what Bujdosó is proposing or suggesting. But the channeling of Szabó here has never been more apparent – or as uncanny – as it is here.
National Amnesia Institute (2019)
National Amnesia Institute is the second and, to date, last of the Bujdosó Trio’s outings. The disc pairs the guitarist with new trio-mates Dániel Szeretö on bass guitar and Ádám Klausz on drums and is in a decidedly different bag than its more wide-ranging predecessor, issued some seven years before.
The disc is more overtly electric than Gold For Leslie and far more politically forthright – if not altogether angry – and cynical than Bujdosó had been to this point. Here, the gloves are off and the satire is more sardonic, serious, resigned and consequential. Apparently, the group was hoping the state would sponsor such “quiet” (no words) protest music. But, no. National Amnesia Institute (NAI) was crowd-sourced and fan funded and made for little more than what amounted to about sixteen-hundred American dollars.
Obviously informed by the atmosphere so pervasive in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, NAI seems just as topical now as it did when it was recorded. At the time, Orban was already nine years in to his grip on the Hungarian people. Five years later, the American Right holds Orban in such high esteem that it now seeks to replicate his authoritarian rule in this country (and elsewhere), making this disc’s concerns resonate with an audience far past 2019 and boundaries well beyond Hungary.
Despite its worthy preoccupations, though, National Amnesia Institute is not nearly as compelling or consequential as it ought to be. It’s as though Bujdosó is channeling the anger, bitterness and snark of Frank Zappa throughout without reflecting on why he was going down this road. That sort of thing works best on “The Holy Left Hand Gives the Finger,” a heavy-metal anthem that has the fortitude of its lengthy rebuke of hypocrisy. But it leads to more meandering than music-making elsewhere.
The sprawling 13-minute “Human Wurlitzer Virus” is all about manipulation (as in “he played him like a piano,” which is authoritarian politics writ large). But, despite adhering to a basic rhythmic pattern, it never coheres in to a convincing narrative. It’s more of a soundtrack to a ghost story than the haunting it should be.
“Breaks in Eternity” is a seemingly pointless Zappa-esque maul of shredding straight out Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar – but much longer than anything heard there. It’s a song that never seems to make its point. The more thoughtful “The Woman and the Curtain” is, likewise, more soundtrack to a hip Western than the showdown Bujdosó is capable of.
The prickly “Full Time Scapegoating” – which sounds like the “Twilight Zone” theme as played by John Zorn’s Naked City – reflects on the fundamental authoritarian practice of constantly seeking and finding a scapegoat to blame for perceived ills. Again, the Zappa influence tends to muffle – if not muzzle – Bujdosó’s own voice on the matter.
All that aside, NAI includes some real hidden pleasures. These are the album’s quieter, less angry – and seemingly less political – passages. There is the delightful dance of “Spring Palace, the playful surf rock of “Squeeze, Rodolpho!” and the enchanting album closer, “Shoebox Harmony,” perhaps the record’s finest moment.
Maybe this means that János Bujdosó’s real talent is reveling in his joys over and above his anguish, however real it might feel – to him and to others.
Sorry But Yes (2023)
Remarkably, Sorry But Yes is János Bujdosó’s first album under his own name in two full decades. His previous solo disc and recording debut, A szabadság sárgája /Yolk of Freedom, was issued way back in 2003. And like the earlier album, Sorry But Yes is apparently a collection of the film and TV themes he has written. This time, though, the themes are fleshed out as fully-arranged songs.
In addition to manning the guitar, Bujdosó apparently plays most of the other instruments on the album as well. But he welcomes such guests as András Kálmán on organ (sadly, only for the searing “Objects for Therapy”) and Ádám Pettik on percussion (“Floating Field of Vision”). Other guests include Árpád Kiss and Áron Bujdosó on trumpet, István Szögi on trombone, Gábor Weisz on sax and Lajos Gyenge and Máté Jancsovics on drums.
The publicity for this December 2023 release seems to recognize the possible roadblocks to Bujdosó’s mainstream acceptance in the past by clarifying that “this one will not be sad or depressing, but, somewhat surprisingly, light, CHEERFUL” (the emphasis is theirs). Sad or depressing? No. But not exactly “light” either.
The disc’s opening track, “Partizan,” certainly sets the tone for this welcome change of pace. The energetic surf-rock number turns out to be the theme to the Hungarian talk show “Péntek esti Partizán,” on which Bujdosó and company (likely most of the same musicians who are heard here) serve as the house band.
Considering this is a Bujdosó solo album, the leader gives a lot of the leads and solos to the horn players, part of what he calls his “mini big band.” But while the horns are well deployed and arranged, the guitar gets nice prominence on such tracks as the metal jazz of “Troll Bossa” (surprisingly said to be influenced by Charles Mingus), the arch-retro MOR of “Every Happy Postcard” and “Never Too Late to Give Up,” which sounds like Bill Frisell waxing a Martin Denny tribute.
Highlights here include the oddly soulful (!) “Happy New Ear,” the Ska-like and unusually festive “Objects for Therapy” as well as the ersatz polka “Floating Field of Vision,” which amazingly features traces of Vinnie Bell’s patented “water guitar” sound made famous in the sixties on such hits as Kai Winding’s “More” (1963) and Ferrante & Teicher’s “Midnight Cowboy” (1969).
Despite its seemingly upbeat pronouncements and as pleasant as it all is, Sorry But Yes is hardly guitarist János Bujdosó’s best or most satisfying effort. Gold For Leslie comes closest to that. This listener would prefer to hear more of Bujdosó’s musicianship and guitar artistry, which seem to be taking a back seat here.
That’s okay. But there is a sense here that Bujdosó is tamping down his own voice to find some sort of mainstream acceptability. Unfortunately, Sorry But Yes mostly comes off as “Sorry, But No.”
“Mizrab” (2024)
Guitarist János Bujdosó pulled together several Hungarian music virtuosos, including Béla Ágoston on saxophone, Dezső Oláh on piano, Modul (a.k.a. Mango) on the Akai MPC, Gábor Gergácz on moog bass and Gergő Szőcs on drums to record this tribute to Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó.
This is, indeed, a remarkable assemblage and the performance here is genuinely moving. The “Mizrab” video was recorded early in 2024 – with Szabó’s younger brother John (János) in attendance – and launched on what would have been the legendary Hungarian guitarist’s 88th birthday on March 8, 2024.
The entrancing “Mizrab” was first heard on Gábor Szabó’s Jazz Raga (1966), long a cult favorite. Soon thereafter, Szabó combined the song’s original melody with the rhythm from another composition of his called “Flowers and Love” (on the 1967 Steve Allen album Songs for Gentle People) to come up with the “Mizrab” we know today.
The guitarist recorded the song several more times in his all-too-brief career and “Mizrab” stayed in Szabó’s repertoire to the end. Guitarists as diverse as Henry Kaiser, Dan Sperber and Lee Ritenour have memorably covered the song as well.
This sextet offers something genuinely new to “Mizrab,” beautifully bringing this lovely piece in to the 21st century. For this listener, the addition of the saxophone and electronics is inspired. For his part, Bujdosó is simply masterful. The genuine musical sincerity and distinctive artistry on display here is arresting and positively compelling.
There are plans for Flemm to tour major venues in the United States in 2025, while an extended recorded tribute to Gábor Szabó is part of the plan. One can only hope that Flemm not only extends the legacy of Gábor Szabó to a whole new generation of listeners, but introduces the world to a most worthy heir in guitarist, composer and bandleader János Bujdosó.