What I know from my mother´s story is,
that my great-granddad also played, but the viola, mostly.
My granddad had several siblings.
I don´t know exactly, but definitely about eight, nine.
The brothers were playing the instruments.
They had their own band, called Plachetkovci.
And they usually played at the dances,
as they did back in the days, mostly for the majority.
They played not only for Roma, but also for the majority.
My great-grandfather from my father's side also played, he was a violinist.
But he used to play on his own.
My granddad also played, mostly on the kontra.
The viola, I mean, the violin contras.
But I´m going back to my mother's side, to my grandfather.
He actually went to play and that's how it's passed down from that generation.
None of those brothers are alive.
None of my, I would say, relatives.
But they also had a sons.
One with the other and that's how it's transmitted.
It's actually maybe even the third generation that they've been playing.
But it´s slowly disappearing.
It´s no longer like before, were five, six people played the instrument.
Now it´s more like there are two, three or just a one person.
I come from four siblings, I´ve got three sisters.
I am the oldest.
And when I started?
I started to have this inclination towards music
quite late, I would say.
When I was thirteen, fourteen years old.
Here and there my father taught me to play the viola.
But in that time I started to like the guitar more.
So, since I was thirteen, fourteen years old, I´d say.
And shortly after that I started to play the gigs.
Later I´ve started to learn how to play the double-bass
and I was playing also with my father in that time.
We´ve played in various folklore groups and ensembles.
And later on I´ve started to study at the conservatory.
Quite late, I can say.
Which I didn't even think about, because I had,
I don't know, a difficult childhood, considering my health issues.
Depends on the point of view.
I somehow take life as it comes.
And suddenly, I am a teacher.
So it is also something to think about.
The ways of God, I don´t know how...
I dare to say that I am a believer.
When I look back into my past over the years,
how I went through everything, how God carried me
through those individual periods and trials.
And how far I've come.
And I never thought that my desires would become true.
The violin, the cello, it was just a dream I would play like that.
And suddenly, also my children play like that.
The children were led to this music, so they went to elementary art school from an early age.
They are very versatile.
They also like this and that and it is kind of disappearing nowadays.
For every child, his father is the first one,
who brings the music to him.
Basically yes, I was proud of my father.
When I was a kid, I was looking to him when he was playing,
and I think, that every son, every daughter is proud of their parents.
So am I. If your father is a musician playing the gigs,
sooner or later you will want to play as well.
I like folklore music since I was a child.
Back in the day, when there was a wedding in the family and the folk groups were playing, as they did,
I always wanted to be the closest possible, so I could see those musicians playing.
And I was attracted to the viola from the beginning.
Because I was comparing who was better,
whether my father or the other man, who was playing there.
Yes, yes, they were playing also in our house.
when I started to slay the guitar,
my father used to play with me.
My sister plays the guitar as well.
So we were all playing together, we were singing.
And you know, when we threw some kind of a party or visit,
I think it was very common in a normal, ordinary families,
that people were singing together.
I know people still do it the same way.
When people meet, they use to play and sing together.
My father taught me, but I also had a good neighbor.
We were visiting each other.
And he also led me and encouraged me to do that.
When a man starts to play, he always seeks something.
He won't settle for just one person teaching him how to play.
But he always finds something new, for example this guy plays like this.
I want to see you, how you play.
And when a person is also smart enough to learn something himself,
or the hearing, as you mentioned, it can also be done by ear.
After all, a person must have such an outlook
that he is somehow guided to what should be done.
After that, the person also develops himself.
He searches, he listens to the recordings.
Something inspires him and so on.
Then he creates his own style.
My relationship to Roma music
is very positive, I would say, I really enjoy Roma music.
Even more the Hungarian one.
Although Roma and Hungarian music is a bit mixed.
Especially with the halgatós, with those slow, wistful songs.
Sometimes I played at the events where no one sang.
Some are set in such a way that they don't even know what it is, what song they are playing.
And we, Roma, or some kind of a music being played,
the music itself, that melody carries some message.
Something what a man wants to express.
I usually go back to the classics.
They weren´t singing, no one sang, they wanted to express something with their music.
Nowadays some people think that the music without singing is something bad.
Singing or nothing.
But it should also be the case of the ones feelings.
When you talk to someone, you feel something the other person feels something, too.
And you don´t have to say a word.
You can share something nice, only the impression of something.
And there is no need to say anything.
That´s why I talk about the singing and all that.
It is the same with the music.
There are many bands now, especially the ones from Hungary,
which start to play and it touches your heart.
There are some memories and also some future.
There is a hope in those songs, there is a message it the melody.
From my own experience, all Roma musicians
when they get into the circles of the majority, it's different.
Maybe I am digressing a lot now, but here is the origin of all this,
that the majority is very distant from the Roma.
And perhaps it souldn´t be this way.
Because people only see the settlements, but that´s not all.
In fact, I would say,
Slovakia doesn´t even know what kind of Roma live in Slovakia.
Even the whole world.
I think it´s not like that in the surrounding countries.
I have now turned very far.
But it was through the music that the majority, those Non-Roma friends started to respect me.
Then I played more with the Non-Roma.
And one thing led to another.
They took me as an equal and saw that there was really no problem.
Through that music.
And when I look back, maybe that's why we're at the level we are now.
And I don´t mean just musically.
But also mentally or materially.
My grandparents also worked with the majority.
One and another.
They observed what was good and they chose it.
That´s the result.
Since I also played the guitar, it's so diverse for me.
I like this and that.
That's the musicianship of it.
For example, there are the musicians who maybe play in a modern band and they tell you:
„I don´t like this folklore music, I don´t understand it.“
But for me, it´s different.
With the classical music as well.
If it´s nice, it will touch my heart.
I'm more of an enthusiast when a song catches my attention.
If there is a new song that touches my heart
I will sing it for a half a year, maybe.
Then, suddenly, something new appears.
It doesn´t necessarily have to be a new song,
but also an old one, which I´ve never heart before.
It is not given, that it has to be this particular song.
I will come and go, if something catches my attention.
It's like meeting a new person.
How could I describe it?
When a man meets a woman or a friend
he talks differently to every one of them.
And the relationship is just different.
Probably on such a level that I like this more about him.
It's the same with that song, some more, some less.
I´ve traveled all around Slovakia
as a member of a various folklore groups.
In Margecany.
In Žakarovce, when I used to play with my dad, at the age of 16.
Later, when I was older and married already, I was in Italy.
I was in Czech Republic, in Poland many times, also in Germany.
My dad had a band, they were cousins.
Coincidentally,
they were cousins of both, my father and my mother.
They were a little bit older, in their forties.
I was sixteen and I was plaing with them.
That folklore group was called Kliperčan.
I played there for about 2-3 years.
Then I played in Margecany.
It was a completely different group.
I was there with the majority, with the guys of my age.
It was folklore group Jadlovec, I think.
It still exists today, including the Kliperčan in Žakarovce.
Those folklore groups still exist today.
For some time I worked in Krompachy,
where I already had my own band.
Gradually, I started putting together a band.
We played there for a couple of years.
With the ensemble called Krompašan, I suppose.
And later we also played our own gigs.
For some time I played also in Spišská Nová Ves,
in a Čačina folklore group.
With my children.
Since my children have grown up, I already have an adult children, I also play with them.
And I used to play...
Because when people find out,
that you can play and they can get along with you,
that you are able to substitute someone else, then they contact you.
And so I traveled back and forth
in the all directions, from Košice to Spišská Nová ves and Prešov.
For some time we played with the folk music band Ďusi Band from Prešov.
They are actually here, the father and his son.
That´s how we connected.
He has smart kids, I have smart kids too,
so we started to play together.
But the basis of our folklore music band is, that we are called Žigovci.
Me and my children.
The ensemble consists of a son playing a violin, then vocals, cello and accordionist
from the area where we come from, from Švedlár.
That's the basis of music.
Well and then we also host some guests, if necessary.
Or we are invited to help the others, that´s what we do.
I teach at the Basic Art School (ZUŠ) in Smižany.
And I mostly teach the double bass there.
My sister herself was so surprised that I teach there.
She was also curious, if Roma children attend that school.
No, they´re not.
This school had about 570 pupils in the past.
Now it has decreased a bit.
But of all the children, only two of them are Roma.
No more, just the kids from majority.
I don´t teach any Roma child.
And what surprises me a lot,
I'll probably turn a bit to the differences,
but when those kids from majority find out what you´re like,
they don't even notice that a Roma is sitting next to them.
Maybe I shouldn´t say that, but the truth is,
that a Roma child, when he knows he is not up to it, he will not push himself there.
Even when it comes to music.
I remember a boy, who came from a settlement,
so he spoke mostly Romani.
He was very skillful.
When he came to my class, he understood what I was saying.
Also the theory of music, when it was necessary to explain something, I did.
He also laughed with me.
And when my colleague said to me late,
that he didn´t perceive at all, it was only because he didn´t understand.
But he was a smart boy.
But that´s the thing that majority doesn´t know at all.
That those children also think, but in their own language.
I would say, that...
Roma children are gifted, they can learn by themselves,
they just need to be guided.
They would play and they don´t need to go to the school.
Because if it catches him, he can do it on his own.
He just need to be guided, either by his father or a close family member.
And they start to teach him.
Although maybe unprofessionally, but anyway.
But he simply pursues his goal even without mastering the notes.
There are lot of Roma children, a musicians, even an adults now,
who really achieved something and didn't have to go to the art school.
From my own experience, I can see on the children I teach
that nothing will come of them in advance.
I give him something to practice and he has a problem with it.
Maybe it´s a parent thing.
They need to deal with their own things,
so they send the kid to the school, to keep him occupied.
I was thinking of how great it would be
to turn more to the settlement.
So that I could simply teach those Roma children there.
But there is another problem,
that they are more inclined towards that modern music.
This is where the tradition ends.
Our traditional culture.
The relationship to that folk song is not the same as in the past.
Or maybe is, but through the modern musical instruments.
They would sing the folk song, but it the different version.
A piano, a guitar, a saxophone, and so on.
It was all worth it, anyway.
That the young people, a children seek me out and they want to play.
They want to know how I do it.
Even now, nowadays, some people come to my house.
They want to take a lessons.
They come to our place.
That´s the thing, they are not Roman.
They are boys or young people from majority.
It´s hard to say, what is my dream.
First of all, what would probably every person says,
for my children to be healthy.
I ´ve got a grandchild already, my son is married.
And maybe, my grandson will play as well.
We'll see what happens, of course the time has changed.
Whether he will like it.
I wish my children, after I somehow started the education in this way,
so they will continue with it, so that somehow they do not fall.
To avoid any decay.
Either this way or another way.
Whether it is the mental side or the material side.
For them to be successful.
And first of all, that they should be honest, fair people
and hardworking and all that.