Dear Friends,
We are so, so excited to be completing our record Music of Elderflowers.

Recorded in Budapest this spring and summer, it includes Matthew Szemela's brilliant fiddling, Misha Khalikulov's gorgeous, dynamic cello playing, and my personal testimony to re-learning heritage and reinterpreting it in our village in the diaspora in the Bay, through my singing and arrangements.  We're honored to have guest musicians Éva Fábián (voice and percussive cello), Andrea Navratil (voice), and Gergely Agócs (Transdanubian long flute) join us on several tracks - they are master Hungarian folk musicians and have supported this project from its very beginnings.

A decade in the making, this album is the culmination of years of travel back and forth between California and the Carpathian Basin, song collecting, translating, arranging, rehearsing, researching... with the aim to share beautiful music, and to share information about cultural practice, history, worldview, and different approaches we can take to handling culture, and to interacting with each other.

The CD features music from all five major regions, dialect areas of Hungarian folk music - the Great Plains, Transdanubia, historical Upper Hungary, Transylvania, and Moldavia - with a focus on Mezőség, Gyimes, and Moldavia.  The total time is 65 minutes, with 26 melodies on 17 tracks.  There are ballads and laments, slow dances, fast dances, weaving songs, and more, with varied instrumental accompaniment that is traditional, composed, or improvised.  The CD booklet is bilingual, and all song words with full translations will be found on our website.

We didn't do a crowdsource funding campaign for this album, and the expenses of recording and manufacturing, even on a tight budget, are greater than the grants and donations we have supporting it.  We've already put in the work -- recorded, mixed, mastered, graphics, translations, logistics -- and the CD is at the press.  But we're still paying for many of these upfront expenses, and it's not too late for you to contribute to the cause and help us across the finish line!

Thank you to those who have already pre-ordered, and if you haven't, pre-order now!  A pre-order is a donation of $25 (or greater) toward this project, which is tax-deductible, and it gets you a signed copy of the CD, mailed to you 10 days before the official release, and the privilege of being a hero who is supporting our work.  Vadalma will have CD release performances on the West Coast, East Coast, in Hungary, and in Transylvania, Romania.  We are really looking forward to sharing the album with you!

With gratitude,
Zina Bozzay, for Vadalma

 

Return to Vadalma's homepage here to learn more about Vadalma or to pre-order