Her father left Hungary as a child, arriving in the U.S. with his mother and her new American husband before 1950. Zina grew up in a family where she had the Hungarian identity and the name, but not the language. When she became familiar with Béla Bartók's compositions inspired by folk songs, she wanted to experience the original source, so she visited Transylvania several times, gaining a much deeper understanding of the remnants of traditional village life, which had a profound impact on her. In 2010, she founded the Hungarian Folk Singing Circle and the Vadalma trio in San Francisco. In 2017, she returned to Hungary full-time, teaches students from over 50 countries, partly remotely and partly in person, across the U.S. and Europe, and offers summer workshops, mentoring, and coaching in collaboration with various Hungarian institutions and folk performers.
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Tell me about your Hungarian roots and how your family (and later yourself) cherish your Hungarian cultural heritage while being raised in San Francisco.Â
My father left Hungary at the end of World War II as a small child, arriving in the U.S. with his mother and her new American husband (his stepfather) before 1950. They weren't allowed to speak Hungarian at home, and he was picked on at school, too. His stepfather was a military pilot, so the family moved from one base to another. Altogether, they had a very different experience from those who arrived after 1956, or those who had two Hungarian parents in the household. He lost his mother tongue. He reconnected with his biological father after decades of separation, right as I was born. We visited Hungary every year in my early childhood as he rekindled that connection. Those trips had a profound impact on me. In San Francisco, we had trinkets around the house and Hungarian dresses for holidays, but we weren't connected with the Bay Area Hungarian community at all—I connected with them only as an adult. As a child, I encountered Hungarian culture through music very early on. During my piano studies, I learned Bartók pieces almost immediately, and was curious to learn more.
Where does your interest in music (and Hungarian folk music) derive from?
I was drawn to music from my earliest memories. As a child, I assumed all musicians composed the music they played, so I arrived at my first piano lessons with my own little compositions. Fortunately, my teacher didn't tell me otherwise, so I kept writing music throughout my childhood. My favorite classical pieces were those influenced by folk traditions. During high school, I studied Cuban percussion and Javanese Gamelan, while during Conservatory, I studied North Indian singing and Mandinkan kora, and sang in the early music choir. I spent half a year doing field research on music in Argentina, and a summer of music research in Japan. My interest in Eastern European music led me to work with a choir in California specializing in Balkan traditions. It was completely organic that I sought out Hungarian folk music.
You wanted to hear the original source material Béla Bartók used for his works, but couldn't find them in the U.S., so you moved to Hungary, right?
That's right. I was familiar with Bartók's compositions inspired by folk songs, but I wanted to hear the village recordings themselves, which we had learned about in music history class. In Budapest, I was incredibly lucky to find the Óbuda Folk Music School, where the singing classes are taught directly from village recordings. After a few dozen songs, I started to fall in love with them. Because I didn't yet speak Hungarian, my focus was initially musical: the ornamentation, tuning, rhythm, vocal timbres, etc. This is actually how I acquired Hungarian: writing out the song words, singing them back, and gradually learning their meanings. Naturally, over time, the song texts had more and more meaning for me as well. I learned very quickly that the old recordings and the songs were just the tip of the iceberg: these captured a whole way of life and thinking. I'd say that's when the course of my life truly changed.
What impact did your visits to the Carpathian Basin have on you?
After a few early visits to villages, I'd say a very impactful trip was in 2015, when I went to stay with Aunt Erzsi Dezső in Magyarszovát (Suatu), in the Mezőség region of Transylvania, for five days with my then three-year-old daughter. I had already learned dozens of songs from her, but those days together gave me a much deeper understanding of village life and the misunderstandings about it. I learned about abundance—of fruits, fresh air, time—in a context we call ‘poverty', about song words as communication, about living off the land. Many profound lessons from that week stay with me to this day. I think it gave me the courage to strike out on various different trips after that as well, with a broader purpose and curiosity about context.
On later trips, I saw the empowerment of being able to make everything for yourself, not just the food directly from growing vegetables and raising animals, but also your clothes and every item in your home, rather than being dependent on stores for basic survival. I had spent years in San Francisco seeing the contrast. I could reflect on the profound sense of hollowness and rootlessness for those who don't have those skills and that knowledge anymore. I developed more ways of thinking about the work I was doing, what role I was serving, and what the gap really is, beyond just the songs. Ultimately, I became interested in what we lost: the real cost of the ‘modernization' changes many see as positive. For example, it seems much more convenient to buy fabric in a store than to gather fibers, prepare, spin, dye, and weave them. But when those spinning gatherings disappear, you likely lose those lifelong friendships, daily emotional support, social time, flirtation, catharsis, and dozens of songs… That's a steep price for some cheap fabric. Everything I've learned in the villages goes back into my singing classes, lectures, and performances. It's the foundation for everything I do—it provides the basic orientation for how I present these materials.
Upon your return to the U.S., you started teaching the Hungarian folk songs you had collected in Hungary. Who was interested in learning them and their cultural context?
I returned to San Francisco in 2010 and sought out someone in the Bay Area Hungarian community to continue studying with—I was heartbroken to be leaving my mentor Éva Fábián in Hungary. The folks I reached out to said they wanted to learn from me, which seemed absurd since they were native Hungarian speakers and I was still very new to the style. I learned that they hadn't had access to the original source recordings, which I already had thousands of, and with my musical training, I was able to break down and explain the musical aspects of more challenging songs to them. I wanted to expand it beyond the Hungarian speakers, so I opened up the classes to non-speakers—essentially creating what I had been looking for myself earlier. That was the beginning of the Hungarian Folk Singing Circle (Népdalkör). People of all sorts of backgrounds joined: non-Hungarian speakers with Hungarian ancestry, Hungarian immigrants, folk dancers, people who were interested in Balkan music and other Eastern European styles and hadn't had any other way to learn about Hungarian music up to that point, people who were partnered with a Hungarian, etc.
In the early years, I taught songs from all the major Hungarian regions in the Carpathian Basin, except for the Great Plain, which I knew the least, and their Christmas folk songs. I taught mostly from archival recordings, but some of my own recordings as well. Having been immersed in Hungary with people who had been working with these materials for decades, it was a pleasure to share what I know with those who were hungry for it. I called my mentors in Hungary every week, and I returned for one–two months each year to learn more, and especially to visit the villages. I knew what needed to be explained to those in California, whether about the regions or village life or the singing technique, because they were the same questions I had had. I think being able to relate to the learners was a big part of its success.
In the meantime, the Hungarian community had been asking me to sing for national holidays such as 15 March or 20 August. I was usually singing solo a cappella because there wasn't a local band. I wanted to share more of these songs with the broader community, with those who didn't come to the singing classes. Since I was a trained composer, an organic solution emerged: I found musicians from my ‘village', and created accompaniment that I thought suited the songs—that's how my trio Vadalma was born. We developed our arrangements over several years, giving concerts at many different venues, especially places where Hungarian folk music hadn't previously been presented—not only the local heritage festivals and the big stages, but rather small, intimate listening rooms and concert venues that presented various other styles of music. I prefer those settings and the personal connection. I shared background information and song translations—since the concerts were partially educational, sometimes people who came to a show then joined the classes. So between Népdalkör and Vadalma, I built a wonderful community over those several years. In 2017, I had the opportunity to move back to Hungary.
Since then, you have had students from all over the world in your singing classes. Who are they and why are they interested? Â
First, I was invited by the Hungarian Heritage House (Hagyományok Háza) in Budapest to hold a Hungarian folk singing class in English, as I had been doing in San Francisco. The students included diaspora Hungarians (for example, studying at Balassi Institute), international students (for example, studying at Kodály Institute), expatriates wanting to get to know the local culture, English language teachers, and people simply interested in singing. Even local Hungarians joined to learn the folk songs and practice English. Andrea Navratil and I held classes at the S4 Cultural Center for a time. Then Covid hit. I'd never have thought group singing classes would work online, but we decided to give it a try with my weekly group. Since I already had contacts in the U.S., I sent an invitation to join us. We quickly went from ten people to 25, then expanded from one group to two, then three. When I got a message from someone in Australia, I added a morning time in Budapest for their evening, and later an early afternoon class for people in Asia. I've had students from every continent, over 50 countries, and over 25 U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
What are your teaching methods?
My teaching methods are the same whether in-person or online, and how I learned—the wonderful and powerful method of the táncház movement in Hungary. We listen to the original source recording, and we sing it back line by line—that's the basis. I print out the song words, we go through the pronunciation and translation together, and I give a bit more background information to make sure that everyone is oriented. I just published an article through the Institute for Musicology in a volume celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the movement, addressing this question in great detail.
You've worked with several Hungarian folk performers beyond Éva Fábián and Andrea Navratil. Who had the biggest impact on you?
Éva was my main mentor for the first few years in Hungary. I quickly got to know Marianna Nyitrai and Gergely Agócs, and then Andrea. They've all been very important mentors for me; I'm deeply grateful for their support and their patience. I've worked with many others through interviews for my master's thesis (for example, Bea Palya, Ãgi Szalóki, Szilvi Bognár) and through collaborative performances on Vadalma tours (István Berecz, Salamon Soma, Ãgnes Enyedi, and ensembles such as DűvÅ‘, Pendely, Fényes Banda). Just as important to me, if not more so, are the village musicians I've had the honor and privilege of learning these songs from. My focus now is on working with as many of them as I can while they're still with us.
You work with universities, doing summer workshops, mentoring, and coaching.
Yes, I now teach at several institutions in Budapest: weekly at the Óbuda Folk Music School, single courses or masterclasses at Liszt Academy of Music or Magyar Zene Háza, annual lectures for the Fulbright Scholars, ELTE, arriving groups of study abroad college students, and at several local secondary schools. Over the years, I was invited to hold workshops at various institutions, or coach a professional singer or an ensemble as they prepared for a performance or recording, or my students wanted intensive study in the summer. I've taught at various places across the U.S., like Csipketábor, Hungarian Heritage Festivals, and Hungarian Houses in various cities, folk music venues, and community music centers. Recently, I've been in Cleveland, OH, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, giving presentations and teaching songs.
You've also been teaching Hungarian pronunciation to non-Hungarian speakers.
This developed organically in the singing classes. I opened up those to both speakers and non-speakers, who obviously needed to learn the letter sounds. In order not to bore the speakers, I had them come half an hour earlier so we could go through the alphabet. Many who joined the Singing Circle became ongoing members for years, but there were always newcomers joining us, so it was a practical solution to hold separate Hungarian pronunciation classes. Over time, I've developed the classes further and refined how I teach the sounds. I realized this would be practical for other groups besides those who attend my singing classes, so I've welcomed them as well. Many Hungarian classes focus more on vocabulary and grammar, with some teachers struggling to explain how to make the sounds or assuming pronunciation is a lost cause. I don't take that approach. It brings me great joy to explain it from the point of view of a native English speaker, to bring them clarity and demystify it. It's a phonetic language, and there are only a couple of sounds not shared with English.
How do you live your dual national identity?Â
My life is completely bilingual and bicultural. So are my children, my friend circle, my extended family, and my professional life. I enjoy bridge-building and cross-cultural understanding, and being able to serve a role that I was seeking out myself. I'm thankful that, given my own experiences, I can help others on the spectrum between these cultures, or who are Hungarian-adjacent, through their relationships, profession, or hobbies.
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