Sándor Szabó

Dear My Friend, Followers,

Surely there are some of you who have noticed that I have not been active on Facebook since the spring of 2020, and there have been no updates on my website. This is not specifically due to the general viral situation. Facebook is no longer about what it started with, so it has now become unsuitable for us to share artistic values ??on it. I found that previous shares did not support either the concerts or the released CDs. No more people came to concerts and no one downloaded my albums, not to mention that no one buys a CD anymore. Updating my website was actually delayed because since the spring of 2020, 8 previous recordings have also been released and I have also created 3 new albums, so it filled all my time. I just got to the point where the update is complete and here I would also like to take this opportunity to tell you what has happened to me over the last more than half a year.

You may have experienced that the International Acoustic Guitar Music Festival was missed. Not only was this a year of organizing work wasted, but all the network of contacts was weakened, with which the 6-7 venues that hosted the concerts each year began to settle for other priorities. In the long run, this could also mean that the 18-year tradition is coming to an end here.

Of course, the current situation has brought not only bad but also good things. In the forced quarantine, I was able to devote a lot more time and attention to creating music that is much more demanding than creating anything on an acoustic guitar. I’ve always wanted to exist as a composer in a way that doesn’t bind and oblige the guitar but unleashes possibilities within myself. I felt it was time to create my music, whose plans I had cherished for decades, but lacked the time to continually deepen. This is now given.

An important part of my oeuvre is the Echolocation album series, which began in 1997. You can read about this in several of my interviews. The bottom line is that it’s a sound and music-making concept where I prefer to play electric guitars, but it doesn’t sound in my hands the way you know electric guitars in general either. This may sound strange to purists who like acoustic guitar music and who have known me as an acoustic guitarist for 4 decades. Now, however, my musical self is also unfolding, which has been going on since 1997, when the Echolocation I album was released, is constantly evolving and has really started to unfold in recent years. This is shown by the Ethereal series in America, where Kevin Kastning is my partner, as well as my ever-growing Echolocation album series, which is now in its ninth part, in recent years. All of these can be found and listened to on Spotify. You can also read more about the creation of recently released albums, their music, and the sound concept in the Reviews and Articles menu.

Forced staying home is also good for man to go deep within himself and try to find all that is TRUE because the events that have taken place in the outside world have been completely manipulated to cover up the true events that cannot belong to us humans. When all over the world, but especially here in Hungary, where we can experience the desertification of culture directly, the question arises as to who we artists are for whom we create at all. Creating it in such a way that it can mean material existence is only possible along with industrial parameters, but slowly we can speak about it in the past tense.

Where will the artist and art be in this global desertification? Every day I am tormented by the question of how important I am to the world with my art. Seeing that the interested audience, who wants to experience music deeply, runs out, for whom the sacredness of music still means something, and even understands the kind of musical language that goes far beyond the simple desire to entertain.

Who do I play for, who do I practice for, who do I compose for? Well, at first I only think of one thing, myself. In fact, I’ve been doing this so far, and there have been a lot of accusations for it, though I ignored it because, for me, music isn’t a means of entertainment, it never was. I didn’t even want to entertain myself with it, let alone others. For me, music is not a hobby, not a pastime, but a way of life, even life itself. If we are that way, I have to look for the meaning of my life now. A beam of light flashed in this search.

We are all part of the Creator's consciousness, whether we know about it or not. We got the music to have a channel of communication about our level of consciousness with the pervading Creator's consciousness. It is through this that musical intuitions come from him, and through the soul of our audience, our experiences return to this transcendent path. So when I play music for myself, I play directly for the Creator, I pray directly to Him. Perhaps a good thing about this evil is that we can finally, even if compulsively, address the Creator directly and form a more intimate relationship with Himself, which is the same as we are part of it. This realization gave me hope for spiritual survival.

Well, one of the dowries of this realization is that as an artist I have nothing to lose, I am free, I am not a serving musician, I am not bound by cultural dogmas, trends, I feel outside of the force fields manipulating the masses. As a result of this liberating feeling, I created 3 albums Echolocation VII-VIII and IX in half a year.

As I write these lines, VII and VIII have already appeared and can be listened to, downloaded. The IX was only completed a few days ago and I hope to come out later this year. I feel a bit like Noah who knows he has to save the most important things through his ark.

I know time one of the most important resources of all. It doesn't matter what we spend it on. That’s why I can’t recommend anyone, everyone to spend their precious lifetime listening to my music. It is not even certain that the high-threshold stimulation thresholds would be struck at all by this music that encourages silence. This is not music for everyone and not for everyone, primarily for myself, so for the Creator and for whom it is the choice of one who is able to make some spiritual sacrifice and pay tribute to his precious lifetime to listen to. Thank you for all this and on behalf of myself and the Creator.

Sándor Szabó

Vác, November 19, 2020