July 30, 2016
chain bridge budapest
I did, however, find a fabulous new link to a list on another site, which I have added, and if I ever get to Budapest on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll be able to try those places.
So take a visit to my Thumbnail Guide to Budapest Open Mics, Jam Sessions and other Live Music.
So check it out!
July 29, 2016
jack doyle’s budapest
I’m now in Heidelberg, and so far so bad, in terms of live music. The university town decides to turn off for the summer…. But I will continue to explore…. I ended up at another Irish pub last night, and who knows….
July 28, 2015
chain bridge budapest
I have added another open mic, a couple of open mic list links and several other links to fill out the page.
July 25, 2015
Szimpla Facade Budapest
The Szimpla is a fabulous garden bar place that looks like a squat, and is made up of all sorts of different bars, rooms, chicha smoking areas, a recording studio, everything. It has always been one of my favorite places to go at least once while in Budapest, and it gets absolutely packed tight with thousands of people in the various mazes of the rooms and halls.
The stage for the open jam and open stage is a wonderful, quite large, end-of-a-long bar room and last night there was a pretty sizeable and receptive audience, and a could of guys who were running it, jamming throughout. I showed up in time to get on the stage as the next performer and played a number of songs, with one of the guys accompanying me on bass and the other on a drum. The mic was great, so I enjoyed the singing.
After my set, unfortunately, I had to make off pretty quickly to find a restaurant. Crossing the street from the Szimpla I immediately heard a gypsy band playing in a restaurant, and a crowd around the outside, in the street. I filmed a bit but did not go in there. Instead, I found a great little Hungarian food restaurant, a traditional one, a few streets over, completely abandoned of clients – all of whom wanted to get robbed paying for crappy food where the tourists congregated.
After dinner, well before 11 PM, I returned to Szimpla, but as I expected, the open stage was finished already.
During this time I had received some messages from Paris and the the Place Pigalle, however, hearing that Raphaëlle’s weekly Friday night open mic at the Noctambules bar was yet another fabulous one; one, in fact, it turns out that was among the best, with probably the biggest crowd yet. I regretted missing it, but it is not possible to be in two cities at the same time, unfortunately, since I love both Budapest and Paris…. But I’ll be at the Noctambules next Friday…(and thinking about Szimpla?!!).
July 24, 2015
jack doyle’s budapest
It meant that I could sit back and listen to a very long set by the duet that has hosted this open mic for a few years, and really appreciate their stuff. It also meant I could give them a big break and do a long set of my own, which lasted at least half an hour.
The MC duet band at Jack Doyle’s open mic – first song.
Oh, and of course, it also meant I could enjoy the cold Kilkenny even more than I usually do….
The MC duet band at Jack Doyle’s open mic – second song.
Stay tuned for more hot stuff in Budapest!
August 10, 2014
chain bridge budapest
This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.
So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Budapest, Hungary since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….
July 26, 2014
Táncház
I heard the music from the street, violins, a bass fiddle, some smacking and stomping. So I entered the kerf – a beer garden of a kind that Budapest is full of, using mostly ruined buildings or the foundations where buildings used to be – and followed the sounds of the violins into a small sub-bar off the edge of the kert. There I saw a fabulous vision of three young guys in their 20s and a young woman in her 20s playing what sounded to me like Hungarian folk music. In front of them danced a man in a crazy body slapping dance I’d already seen in a completely different context.
I took a beer and sat and listened, and when the band stopped, I decided to ask if it was an open jam session, even though I knew that if it was, it was strictly Hungarian traditional music. I asked the right violin player of the three present – the woman played the bass – because he immediately launched into an explanation of the entire history of the location AND the music, and told me what it was all about.
It’s called a Dance House, and Budapest has five or six ones that run different days of the week, according to this violinist. The music comes mostly from Transylvania – yes, yes, Dracula and all that – and is part of a Hungarian and Romanian folk tradition that goes back hundreds, and even thousands of years. In more modern times, Bela Bartok, the great Hungarian composer, began collecting the music and preserving it, and soon the phenomenon of the Dance House, or Táncház, was born basically from the 1970s onward, in a Hungarian folk revival period.
The musicians now get together to play this traditional music, they share the songs amongst themselves, and they play it in the many Dance Houses around the country. But it is essentially a kind of gypsy music played in villages. My interlocutor – who is a music student from Transylvania, by the way – told me that even the gypsies that play gypsy music in the cities do not necessarily know this kind of music, which is different.
He said that in some villages the musical sessions usually at peoples’ homes Dance Houses and at weddings can go on for days on end, with dancers and musicians even taking shifts – going off to sleep while another group returns to celebrate.
Last night several other musicians showed up, more and more dancers joined in, then some people began singing to the pieces, and for once I did not take my guitar out of my bag, but rather hit the dance floor and spun my partner round and round – or rather, I think that she spun me.
July 25, 2014
jack doyle’s budapest
Last night, therefore, I was really pleased to see that the open mic I discovered last year – or whenever it was – and that takes place at the Irish pub called Jack Doyle’s, right near the busy pedestrian tourist trap street of Vaci, still exists.
Jack Doyle’s is a pretty typical Irish pub, with the nice touch of a little library and reading area at one end, and a small stage located centrally in the room so providing great viewing and excellent sound for all spectators.
In fact, the sound system last night was really amazing, and I don’t remember it being that good last year. The vocals came through so crisp, so clear, and you could even hear yourself singing and playing. The guitars might have done better to be a little louder, but that was ok.
It turns out that the Irish owner/manager of the place used to work in the Coolin in Paris! It turns out he is friends with John Murphy, the once upon a time MC of the musical activities at the once upon a time Beckett’s Irish pub in Budapest, that was closed in January. So it is a small, small world – well, especially in the international world of Irish pubs!
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July 29, 2013
Szimpla Facade Budapest
But last night it was back, and has been for a few months, now run by Zsolt, an IT professional in his day job, who likes to use the other side of his brain in the jam in the evening…. It was a little different formula than two years ago, in fact a lot different. This time the accent was more on free jazz, rock fusion sort of stuff. But that may only have been due to the particular musicians who showed up – a guitarist, drummer, saxophone player, bass player.
My problem was that I showed up far too late. Two years ago it started late and went to beyond 3 AM. Now, it seems that pressure from neighbors means that it runs from 9 PM to 11:30 PM. I had stayed late at the race track for various reasons, and then I went out for a pizza after first confirming that the jam was happening. But by the time I got there to play, after my meal, it was almost 11:30. Zsolt, however, keeps the spirit of the Szimpla jam as I knew it open. He invited me to play anyway, despite the lateness, but also deciding not to use the electric guitar and bass. And after the drummer began on drums, he turned to bongos.
I did not want to abuse their kindness, so I only played two songs – my guitar plugged into an amp and my vocals going through a mic. In any case, the vibe was great, and I enjoyed the two song jam immensely. And the audience was pretty big and applauded, so the whole thing was a great capping off to my weekend open mic foray, especially as the first two had been in Irish pubs, and this one in a bona fide Hungarian kert (beer garden thing).
The Szimpla garden bar area is located in a building that used to be a factory and was slated for being torn down. It then got turned into a series of bars, a recording studio, a beer garden, a place for films and lots of music and the jam session on Sunday nights.
Here is a great description from the web site: “The opening of Szimpla Garden in 2002 has been literally and also symbolically a milestone in the alternative life of Budapest. Converting an old factory into a huge open-air cinema and pub, we were able to create a unique framework for hosting concerts, theatre shows and many different cultural events. Szimpla defines itself as a ’cultural reception space’, indicating our intention to embrace genres and performers off the mainstream, presenting them in an informal atmosphere. Moreover, with constantly supporting initiatives for urban sustainability, Szimpla has been serving as an ultimate incubation house of green ideas from the very beginning.”
The jam has been on and off, so don’t get your hopes up. But if it is on, don’t miss it. An open stage where anything goes; sing your own songs or join into the free-for-all with lots of musicians on all sorts of different instruments.
July 28, 2013
szimpla kert budapest
Budapest is a musical city with lots of folk music and classical music and some popular music, and one of the biggest rock music festivals in the world: Sziget. But it is not a city that is strong on the tradition of the open mic and open jam. Having said that, it is the location of one of the best open jam sessions I have ever attended, at the Szimpla Kert, and it has its mainstay Irish pubs that have open mics, or open MCs and bands.
The only guide I am really in a good position to update regularly is that of Paris, since I live there. But I decided to do guides to all the other 20 and more cities on my worldwide open mic tour in order to give the knowledge I have personally of each city’s open mics. The guide has links to sites I know of local guides that may be more up-to-date, but I have chosen to list the open mics or jam sessions that I have played in myself. There may be others that I know of, but if I have not played there, I will not include it on the list. That way, the user learns a little of my own impressions. But I cannot be as certain that the guide is up-to-date – so check before you go.
So here, now, in any case is the Thumbnail Guide to Budapest Open Mics, Jam Sessions and other Live Music. Please do help me whenever you have information to give me on venues.