Laszlo Foldes, Hobo performed in Magyarfalu on 27 February 2006.

The old man from Hungarian Land

…The part of the hall that was supposed to the auditorium are already full of children, buzzing. No organization, as we hear from George Eotvos, who invited Hobo to perform in Magyarfalu.

We are asking the children what they know about Hobo. Olimpia is nine years old, she thinks the singer came from "Hungarian Land", but that is all she knows, she does not know which town he came from. She does not understand the word capital, even after hearing "capitala" she just shrugs smiling: she doesn't know. Why should she? Our questions arise from our expectations, not from the local reality.

"Tiszta szívvel" - With pure heart

At exactly five o'clock the performance starts. By this time at least two hundred children and 50-60 adults are waiting for Hobo. On the loft there are a group of 30 children, separated from the rest, dressed in costumes. As he walks in with white shirt on, the talking and fidgeting become more quite, but the noise does not cease completely. We hear Attila Jozsef, the 159th performance of "You know there is no forgiveness". Hobo plays with the children using his voice and gestures, he recites the poem caricaturing, and he picks a sentence from the poem to aim it to somebody in the audience in order to seize their attention. Still they need to be shushed every now and then. After fighting with them for half an hour, he needs to give it up. So the finishing piece of his performance that was originally planned to be one hour long was "With pure heart". The costume-dressed children stood up to perform; their performance takes more than half an hour. The audience fidgets, chuckles just like during Hobo's performance, but there are some who start dancing for the rhythm of the music.

Hobo: I wanna come back

Hobo told us in the empty hall that he tried to tune the audience to the performance by preserving Attila Jozsef, he left out the "Ode" and the "Late wail". "This is not a show for children, the same would have happened anywhere else" – he said. "I want to come back here, with my band, with a show for these children, because they were amazing, they honored me with the way they danced. " The hall is being swept, the chairs are being piled up and it is twilight outside. Hobo is standing in front of the TV cameras, making peace with the media, reciting a poem. It is creepy. "Come freedom, bring me orderliness. Teach your nice, sober son with good words, and let me play too" he says, and it looks like tear in his eyes. But it wouldn't be Hobo, if he didn't screw his eyes up towards the ad hoc audience, picturing that this is (also) a performance.

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"To me it is amazing to see people like these, to see the children who come to dance for me, well, it is difficult to process, and this was really the most amazing about tonight. What I did here tonight does not matter to me really, because I experienced something I wasn't prepared for, and I will never forget this. But this is staggering. To keep a culture under such circumstances, so purely, so honestly without anybody's interests, well this can knock such a vagabond off of his feet just like me."

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