While the dividing lines between some genres can be blurry and difficult to distinguish, crossing the wrong line can be painfully obvious. The task of finding a noticeable and satisfying way to combine musical styles can be frustrating and unrewarding. Yet when the connection works, the music that is created is usually stunning. Blending familiarity and freshness to create something instantly recognisable yet exciting to festival goers, folk trio Zor have found an obvious but winning combination.
Zor is a brand new project from English flute player Tom Oakes and Hungarian fiddle player Jani Lang. Typically rounding out their trio is Budapest based guitarist Kornel Varga, but tonight they were joined by Ian Stephenson. They play together under the mantra ‘music without borders,’ attempting to combine the folk traditions of Eastern and Western European countries. Despite the slight changes in the band’s lineup, the trio makes its way through a combination of original music and tunes from Transylvanian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian traditions.
Stylistically, these traditions work very well together. The easiest place to delineate between them in this case is looking at the play of Oakes and Lang - the two members of Zor here tonight. More often than not, they play the same melody simultaneously, giving the music a sound unlike any you would hear produced by either instrument on its own. Most of the melodies played are extremely quick, and Oakes’s flute is layered on top of what Lang describes as his ‘gypsy fiddle.’ Even though the same music is played, the instrumentation and styles of each convey a distinctly different tradition. The overlap between these styles creates something fresh and exciting.
Although he is not a permanent member of Zor, Stephenson’s guitar playing should be mentioned. Despite apparently being rather new to the band’s material, which seems very rhythmically complex, he does an incredible job of keeping the music’s break-neck pace in time. More than this metronomic role, his playing is precise and clear and just as mesmerising in its way as the men on either side of him. The guitar seems to be the meeting ground on which the two folk traditions meet and mingle, and Stephenson lays the groundwork wonderfully.
The difference between these two folk traditions is ultimately rather minimal, which is perhaps what Zor is hoping to reveal. Given the same platform, there is a universality to European folk, proving that even without them, music has no borders. Zor don’t yet have any recorded material to offer to the world, but the world waits anxiously for it to come.
