Search - Márta Sebestyén :: World Star of World Music

The Hungarian folk diva Márta Sebestyén rose to prominence as part of a folk revival in Budapest during the '70s. Musicians and fans would congregate at a place called a táncház ("dance house"), and this term eventually came to mean the entire movement. Sebestyén was always as much a musicologist as a singer and discovered many of her favorite tunes in the field, but the beauty of the voice overwhelms everything else. Her folkloric mezzo-soprano would be of alarming purity if not leavened by her ability to channel the lives of simple people living in another place and time. The present compilation covers her career from 1976 through the 1980s. It includes material recorded with three different bands and her most famous track of all, the eerie, sad a cappella love song "Szerelem, Szerelem (Love, Love)," from the soundtrack to The English Patient. --Christina Roden