By Panni De Cheke Qualls
In 1993, the musical landscape of Perth, Australia, offered limited horizons for a classically trained violinist looking for something wildly different. The internet had yet to shrink the globe, and the local conservatory offered little beyond classical and Irish folk streams. But for Alana Hunt, founder of the acclaimed Vardos Trio, a sudden pivot in her life’s trajectory arrived not via a grand epiphany, but through the magnetic pull of a cassette tape.
“My very first exposure that made me want to play Hungarian music was a cassette of Béla Babai and his Fiery Gypsy Band,” Hunt recalls. “This music seemed so exciting and complex to me.”
That initial spark sent Hunt down a 30-year path of musical obsession, cultural immersion, and fieldwork. Today, Vardos is a celebrated fixture in both the Australian world music scene and the tightly-knit Hungarian and Romanian diaspora communities – having shared the stage with Hungary’s Besh o Drom, the Antal Szalai Gypsy Band, and recently Romania’s Taraf de Caliu. But getting the sound right required leaving the isolation of Western Australia and heading straight for the source.
The First Pilgrimage and Culture Shock
Early attempts to replicate the music at home proved frustrating. When a local folk dance group handed Hunt recordings of choreographies from regions like Szatmár and Szék, the musicians tried their best to copy them. “The dance teacher was saying there was something we weren’t quite getting about the rhythm of Négyes,” Hunt explains. “Then I realized there were many types of Hungarian music and that we needed to go there and learn.”
Stepping into the Hungarian folk scene in the late 1990s as a young Australian was a profound culture shock. Armed with only a little of the language, Hunt scoured the listings in Pesti Est magazine, hunting down cafes, restaurants, and the vibrant táncház events that ran every night of the week.
The learning process was distinctly different from the rigid structures of Western classical training. Hunt remembers securing a phone number for the legendary Bea Salamon of the Méta Band. After a struggle to decipher the instructions in slow Hungarian from a receptionist, an eager Hunt arrived two hours early and waited politely on a bench outside the teaching room, listening to people come and go.
“Finally Béja came out and said, ‘Where were you?’ and explained that I should just come in whenever and learn,” Hunt laughs. “It was a funny difference in culture.”
To master the nuances of Hungarian népzene and virtuosic Romany cigányzene, Hunt had to rewire her playing. Salamon instructed her to listen to the music constantly to make up for not growing up with it. Hunt took the advice to heart.
“At that point I stopped listening to all modern pop and rock and only listen to Hungarian and Romanian folk and Romany music (sometimes straying to Slovak, Serbian, Bulgarian etc but pretty much using my time to absorb as much as possible.) I remember Koncz Gergő from Tükrös Zenekar saying he listened to one 1979 recording of the Palatkai Band for three months, and I took this approach but not as extreme as that,” says Hunt.
From there, Hunt learned by mimicry, studying the old masters up close. It meant completely altering her technique—”pulling the bow out wide in Palatka music, and taking out any classical vibrato,” and finding the exact right way to hold the violin to achieve the characteristic rolling ornamentation.
“I was definitely more interested in learning the cafe style music but very quickly developed more of a liking for the folk music. I probably put more effort into trying to replicate the different regions of that music authentically, and I would say my playing of the cafe style music is more in the folk style. I do however try to add more vibrato and glissando to the cafe style to give it some of that special sound,” says Hunt.
When Vardos first started playing this music for Australian audiences, Hunt says it felt like the table Nóta style was more accepted – the folk music version was difficult for the western ear.
“Particularly things like Palatkai music which can sound weird tuning wise and the rhythms slightly dirgy, and especially when lacking context without dancing. At first we mainly played table nóta, peppered with some Jewish and Russian tunes and only played táncház style music at the Hungarian club for dancers, but over the years have been adding more and more táncház music into our concerts. I feel people (possibly because of the internet) are more accepting of unusual world music styles now compared to 30 years ago. People are curious and excited by this music when we play it now,” observes Hunt.
The Engine of Vardos and the Power of Story
Over the decades, Vardos has honed its thrilling, energetic sound. Stripped down to a trio of violin, accordion or viola, and double bass, the musicians have to work incredibly hard to fill the sonic space of a traditional string band. “The accordion and bass player have a lot more work to do without a cimbalom, for instance, or even a tárogató player,” Hunt notes. “They are doing a lot more notes to cover what is not there.”
This engine roars to life during live performances, particularly when accompanying traditional dancers. The dynamic of the stage shifts entirely; the musicians divert their performance energy to lock in with the dancers, pulling the rhythm to make the movements comfortable and accenting the choreography.
For broader Australian audiences at massive events like the Woodford or the Cygnet Folk Festival, the complex rhythms of Transylvania might seem entirely foreign. Hunt bridges this gap with theatrical storytelling, translating the cultural weight of the tunes without delivering a dry history lesson. She introduces audiences to the Juhász Nóta—a traditional song about a shepherd losing his sheep—complete with funny twists and physical comedy.
“Sometimes it is funny how a folk song can be talking about something in one verse and then just switch to a totally different subject in the next verse,” she says. To connect the audience to the source, she might share a tidbit from her fieldwork, explaining how they paid a Romany musician in a village to teach them a tune, and how he used the money to buy rabbits for dinner.
Connection to Memories
For Hungarian-Australians, Vardos provides something much deeper than entertainment: a visceral connection to their heritage. Despite having no Hungarian ancestry themselves, the trio is routinely met with astonishment and deep emotion from immigrants who hear their homeland’s music played so authentically.
“It is amazing when someone cries because we play an old song that their mother or father would sing,” Hunt shares.
This emotional resonance was highlighted during a recent performance at the historic Bonegilla Migrant Experience, the first Australian home for over 300,000 post-war migrants. A close friend of the band, who had lived at the camp from age five, showed them where she used to sleep behind the movie screen. She recounted the profound shock of the harsh, fly-blown Australian bush, and how the diverse migrants united through the music of their disparate cultures.
“She says when we played there it brought back so many memories of her childhood,” Hunt reflects. “It is when we trigger someone’s memories by playing a certain song, and regardless of whether it is happy or sad but they feel so grateful that we have brought them this memory, that we find worth in learning some of the very old music.”
A Second Home
After eight trips to Eastern Europe since 1999, studying in villages like Clejani with Taraf de Haïdouks, or spending a week in Kalotaszeg with an old master like Sanyi Bácsi, Hunt’s connection to the region has transcended simple musical interest.
“I definitely feel a sense of coming back to a second home every time we fly back into Budapest,” says Hunt. “I know there are always places that we are itching to go to like the Fonó nights, Pótkulcs sessions and Uri Muri. Also we always make a point of going to the Méta Tábor, as we know we will learn something new, see old friends make new ones and have some great musical bulis and collaborations. This energy and vibrant music scene is something we don’t often experience in Australia although it does happen sometimes, when there is some type of találkozó with other musicians and dancers. But there is not a sense of a long history and wealth of culture. Knowing and being involved in this culture definitely gives insights and appreciation of other cultural dance and music traditions all over the world, being able to compare and see common threads and have an understanding of something that is unique to each country or region. I am so glad to have been exposed to a greater historical culture, beyond the pop culture on television and radio.”
Hunt also remains thrilled to see the táncház scene not just surviving, but evolving.
“It is interesting that around the early 2000’s we felt like there was a slight lull in the táncház scene and we wondered if it was in decline, some of our favorite táncházes were no longer happening, such as the Molnár Utca with Kalamajka and another second band upstairs, as well as the regular Sunday Méta táncház. However in the last 25 years there are a whole new set of amazing young bands that have started up and new venues and it’s great to see that táncház music is still evolving and growing a new wave of fantastic musicians that have huge amounts of enthusiasm to play this music,” observes Hunt.
Yet, this transmission of heritage flows both ways. When Vardos returned to the source, taking the stage at the Mera festival in Transylvania, they hesitated, preparing a diverse set spanning from Macedonian to Vietnamese out of fear that locals wouldn’t want to hear Australians play their own regional music. They quickly realized their mistake.
“We realized no, they want to see how we play Hungarian music,” Hunt says. “And they were most happy when we did that.”
In the end, Alana Hunt’s devotion and that of the Vardos Trio transcend the simple act of musical mimicry. By treating the folk arts of the Carpathian Basin not as static museum artifacts, but as a living, breathing dialogue, she has helped forge a global community bound by rhythm and memory. When her fiddle sings and the dancers lock into the groove, the thousands of miles between a sweltering Australian festival and a Transylvanian táncház simply vanish, leaving only the timeless, shared heartbeat of the village.
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Photo credit: Alana Hunt
