Kincs, ami nincs: Interview with Sisso

I wasn't so conscious when I was small. I just loved it when my voice sounded. I mostly heard folk music, so that's what I sang on stage and that's what went into my soul. I listened to my song collection cassettes until they were worn to ribbons and an important virtual connection developed between me and mainly Mrs József Simon from Moldova.

Interview with Sisso, in Kincs, ami nincs, magazine of the Ministry of Education and Culture, June 2008

Everyone knows that you've sung since you were a child. Was it always important to sing folk songs? What was the choice?

I wasn't so conscious when I was small. I just loved it when my voice sounded. I mostly heard folk music, so that's what I sang on stage and that's what went into my soul. I listened to my song collection cassettes until they were worn to ribbons and an important virtual connection developed between me and mainly Mrs József Simon from Moldova. But I had other numbers that weren't folk. I liked listening to the radio and remembered everything. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Kati Kovács were favourites, and my brother and I made our own video clips for the songs Sandokan and Madonna, Madonna...

How much has your taste in music changed today and what were the big influences?

Hungarian folk music remained the basic form of expression. When I was about fourteen years old, I discovered Bulgarian folk and Gypsy music, coming into contact with both at the right time, either through a good recording, such as Nadesda Hvojneva's song Glava lita, or at a concert. Bulgarian music even today is the strongest influence ? I like the sound very much, the tone of the kaval and gadulka, the sharpness of the voice, the ornamentation, melodies and uneven rhythms. Gypsy music, mainly the Transylvanian and Nyírség collections of György Martin and Károly Bari, allowed me extremism ? you can sing ballads with such powerful feelings! Then eastern classical music came, North Indian, Arab, Persian and Greek and Sephardic. Om Kaltsoum, Abdul Kharim Khan, Ruth Yaakov...
For a long time I only listened to this music. This decided the melodic turns, the tonality I like. And, of course, the realisation that the lyrics and melody are equally important.
Jazz, songwriters and chansons came later. Joni Mitchell, Patricia Barber, Sarah Vaughan, Cassandra Wilson, Miles Davis, Shirley Horn, Boris Vian are just some of the main ones.

You've played a major role in real traditional folk music having at least as big a following now in Hungary as the popular style of Hungarian and Gypsy songs. What changes have you personally experienced in audiences in this country since you've been making music?

People are becoming more and more open, and listen to music with real attention. There are many young musicians and bands, and the folk sound and instruments are now familiar. All I did was sing folk songs, and then I wrote my own songs, but with a folk philosophy: I expressed my feelings forcefully through a form of music in which everyone is more at home now. Everyone's emotional life has the same nodes: birth, parting from your mother and father (or not), sexuality, marriage, children, burial, putting to sleep, giving birth... and there are problems of the new age, life for singles, distance relationships... I sing about these using folk sounds and subjects. This common viewpoint touches people.

Based on the lyrics and music, each of your albums seems to be closely tied to a phase in your life: you start and close periods, when one's ready you move on to the next. What phases have you been through, and which are the most important and memorable for you?

Psyché is the most important although the others, too, were steps in self-awareness and creation. The brilliant lyrics were there; it was awe-inspiring to encounter a woman who is like me by reading the verses. I believe that their author, Weöres, was winking at us from up there, saying come on, guys, wrestle with me, you'll get there! (The guys are Samu Gryllus, my composer, and me.) With this album I left behind me the thought that "I'm too much" and that a woman like me will come to no good (thrown into the arms of wrong men) because she's not like her environment and, although she's exotic and many people like her, they're jealous of her and don't really understand her. All that has gone, especially after this year's tour. I now know that everything is within. Since this realisation loving has been easier, including loving myself. But to achieve that I've had to struggle a lot with Weöres and Psyché. (Why did you kill her? She died ? perhaps her husband ran her over ? when she was 36 years old.) The last album ? Adieu les complexes ? is a new impression of this inner creation.

How do you feel when you have to let go of your works, when someone else directs your songs? I'm thinking of the Bartók Dance Theatre's production based on your album Dream, Dream, My Invented World (Álom, álom, kitalálom).

I've used the metaphor of birth about making an album and the image can be extended: the baby is borne and at first you just stare ? oh, the cover's like that, this song sounds like that. Next it starts to talk and smile at people: letters arrive from fans, the CD causes them this and that inside. Then the child goes its own way, plays with others: a dance theatre or a puppet theatre performance is born, or a choreography is done for a number, a Bea song inspires painters... and the answer is in the question: you have to let go of children and watch with love as they fly further afield.

Your last album had perhaps the most bizarre lyrics and most complex musical influences. You chose the title Adieu les complexes from Vian. Why precisely Vian and what inspired these bold, very modern songs?

Vian is important because he wrote "L'Écume des jours" (perhaps the tenderest novel about love) and many, many good songs, creative and humanist songs (Déserteur, Bourré de complexes, Je suis snob). I found this line of his and I needed its meaning ? it's in French but all the same universal. (The album was released by a French company.) Good-bye, complexes ? that is I make songs how I like them, with people I think are great. My fear of the labyrinth of international record contracts is also in this title. But this, too, inspired me as my fears have done so many times. Where I was in my life likewise inspired me. I wrote most of the lyrics in 2006 when I got on a plane every two weeks and I lived through my nth distant relationship expanding my singing career in three languages in three countries. (What I am fits in a suitcase.) Then there are Kriszta Bódis's wonderful lyrics in the opening number, Hold (Moon). Female loneliness, bitterness and mystical beauty all in one. And then there is Lover Man, which is about looking for a man in love. I put this at the end of the album: I'm still looking, I'm still searching for my sweet lover man... Because this is an eternal search. Because it's going on inside.

In 2008 you were chosen to be an Ambassador of Hungarian Culture. What does such an ambassador have to do, what duties go with the title?
I just do my own thing as I have until now. That's not difficult for me. (It's not doing it that would be difficult.) I believe that musicians and singers have been ambassadors of the soul since ancient times; through the power of song they make bridges between man and man, and man and God. This goes beyond nations. I work from this profoundly humanist conviction; I pay attention to the individual, to their emotional happenings, and my music is mainly born from this. And this prevents success turning me into a detached and exhausted star icon, but rather creates an open, sensitive being and musician tapped into energy flows.

You've taken on other tasks of public interest, such as the advertising face for children and women. Are you an activist type?
Not quite. But I've learnt a lot from this work, particularly the equal opportunities assignments. Of course, this, too, is about self-awareness; if you stand by something, you have to think it through carefully why it's important for you. The "I'm a celeb and socially sensitive ? brownie point" attitude doesn't wash with me. I don't want to help and put on artificial angel wings, but I'm curious: a meeting with disabled or autistic people, or poor children holds up a mirror to me. This wish to understand, this attention, brings good, radiates and makes everyone feel better. Attention brings alchemical change. And this is true for the inside. You can create your own opportunities with it and not wait for someone to notice you from the outside. Everything is within ? we've got back to the same point. During my Dream Tour we did musical improvisations to the answers to the question What will you be when you grow up? of disabled and blind children, youths in custody centres and children in a gypsy settlement. Daring to dream large scale, planning within, even in spite of apparently difficult external circumstances ? this has to be learnt, everything depends on this.

What do you see as the giant challenges in Hungary and what do you think is sad?

Sándor Weöres, Béla Bartók, Péter Eötvös, Kurtág, Ligeti, Péter Esterházy and Hungarian folk music are important. Our musicians, our poets, people with creative energy gathered here are important. Lack of self-confidence ? "it's your fault that it's bad for me" ? that's sad. But I'm positive. Nowadays even men are inclined to look into themselves and not make everything into an issue of vanity. And this soft, honest, perhaps more feminine viewpoint will count a lot here as well as in the world.

I imagine the answer is with tours, but what do you do in the summer when other people go on holiday? Which are your favourite places in the world?

Right now I've got the baby blues. Psyché tour, new album, lots of appearances already in the first half of the year... This summer I've taken on less, I need to empty myself. Until now I've sung myself silly each summer, loads of gigs and many thousand kilometres. But now I'm going to the sea to look at the water. I like oceanic coastline the best. Mexico and Morocco are important for me.

Who are your most important partners in your life and how much do they shape your work? What effect do they have on your life?

There are many people, my old publishers, my managers and fellow musicians, to whom I owe so much so far in my life. What about now? My band is today a loving community, which I believe is no small achievement. Balázs Szokolay Dongó (wind), András Dés (percussion), Csaba Novák (double bass) and Miklós Lukács (cimbalom) are outstanding, daring musicians, who use their instruments boldly and in an unusual way. A part of my work, the sound of the Bea Palya Quintet, is as wonderful as it is due to them. It is made for them and me, we put it together jointly. Then there's Ágnes Gál, my manager, and by now we've become a great working pair. We've struggled for it and continuously train for it because the current phase of my career is hard, very trying. Every day I have to make important decisions, but the basis, the main principles, have to be worked out. This is as much about self-awareness as music.
Then there's my friend Szilárd Mosonyi, and his method of inventive reality creation; my yoga teacher Kevin Gardiner and all the people I'm close to who I discuss and discover life with.

Besides singing, you're also involved in writing. Are you planning a book, or will you stick with lyrics and articles?

There will be a book and there'll still be the songs and articles. Words are now as important as the melodies. And for me to progress, I believe writing is now a more exact aid. But the beautiful thing about it is that they both stem from the same root: only the means of expression is different but I both write and sing from the same current.