An End of an Era: UH Fest Concludes Its Second Chapter
Published October, 2024
by Easterndaze
UH Fest returns between the 7th and 13th of October this year, but after over a decade of annual festivals, the festival won’t be taking place next year. UH became its own brand over the years by coining a different approach to thinking about music and the festival format –“a new kind of joy”, as their motto echoes. UH Fest is an international music festival tightly interlinked with the local scene. It’s open, it’s experimental and does not like being referred to as an electronic music event. We met András Nun and Krisztián Puskár, the festival’s two “directors” at Gólya (a cooperative-foundation based pub and community house that will be one of the festival’s venues again this year) to talk about the past, present and future of UH Fest.
HOW IT STARTED
UH, registered as the Ultrasound Foundation, has been around since 2000 – but for its first 10 years, it was more of a one-man show, as András Nun puts it. It began as a family business, with András’s sister Zsuzsa doing the graphics for the first website, and her husband, Attila Bertók in charge of programming. Back in those early days, UH also functioned as a fanzine. Soon enough, people like András Rónai and Gergő Kiss joined and became key figures of the festival. At that time, UH hadn’t become as locally embedded yet, despite intensive cooperation with the producers of Tilos, and perhaps even more so with Pararadio.
In the beginning, they only held one-night, multi-stage concerts, then a couple of 4-5 day festivals in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2010 – but these events weren’t structured into one whole week. This was, let’s say, the first era of UH, which, as it’s good to remind ourselves, began about a decade after the regime change in Hungary in 1989, and lasted until around 4-5 years after the EU accession in 2004. The festival already had some EU funding during this period – in 2003, 2005 and 2010.
In 2012, they launched UH Demo, a showcase platform with a specific focus on the local community. “At that time, music platforms like SoundCloud were really bustling, so our idea was to give these local musicians and young people who were uploading a bunch of good stuff to SoundCloud but hadn’t played live yet an opportunity to perform,” says Krisztián Puskár, who joined the organisers’ team that year. “In the span of 5 years, the Demo had maybe 9 runs – we organised two per year at first, and then we did less and less, until we stopped doing them altogether. But the UH Demo played a huge role in re-launching us. It was a key way of reaching new audiences, and in 2014, we decided to do a full, week-long festival without any subsidies,” he recalls.
After becoming a founding member of the ICAS network in 2007, UH joined forces with 15 other European festivals to create the SHAPE network in 2014, and has put on a festival every year since 2015. Formally speaking, SHAPE is an EU-funded project, the details of which MMN Mag has also written about here. UH’s SHAPE membership has been continuous since the beginning, with their current EU grant running until mid-2025. “SHAPE gives us a framework, but it’s important to note that only 20-25% of our performers come from this international collaboration,” adds Krisztián.
In its “new age” or second era, UH lasts for an entire week from Sunday to Sunday, in two separate venues on some days (but never with parallel programming), which requires a decent dose of perseverance from season ticket holders (UH-fatigue is a known phenomenon in Budapest). “You can’t possibly showcase the diversity and all the different trends that are present in music in their entirety over four days, but one week is probably enough, fitting in about 40 performers this year, to at least deliver a really diverse selection,” says András. In terms of genres, UH is practically impossible to pin down. According to Krisztián, UH “has a unique way of curating a collective worldview, a musical and creative approach, that then also blooms in the audience. Through the music they hear at UH, the audience learns to appreciate, understand, interpret, and place the joy of discovery into a relational framework – this is what keeps us going. Our goal for the festival is to give a coherent picture of the ethos we represent, that we believe is important, which can pretty much be stripped back to free and critical thinking.”
FINANCES
The festival’s budget is made up of three sources: ticket revenue, SHAPE project funding, and contributions from local and foreign cultural institutions. Ticket revenue accounts for roughly 20 percent of the total budget, which struck me as a shocking figure at first, given that UH is a well-attended festival (based on the capacity of the venues).
The SHAPE membership and the EU support go a long way in making UH possible year after year, but there are two things worth noting here. One is that SHAPE money funds SHAPE actions and programmes, and this, despite the so-called lump-sum accounting scheme (which, in short, looks at project outputs rather than individual expenditure when accounting), leaves limited wiggle room. Overall, the SHAPE project covers just over a third of the festival’s budget.
The other difficulty is that SHAPE money gets paid out according to the 40-40-20 pre-funding model, which, in Andrew’s words, means that “the SHAPE money is there, but it also isn’t. We get 40 percent of the money in advance, if we finish the festival we get another 40 percent, and after 3 years [and a successful settlement – ed.] you get the remaining 20 percent. So, technically, the SHAPE money sounds good, but only a third of it is actually on your account”.
“The easiest way to visualise this is that we just received the second of the three instalments of last year’s festival grant in August,” adds Krisztián.
Cultural institutes, such as the Goethe Institute or the French Institute, and also the Austrian, Flemish and Swiss institutes also contribute in different ways. Some provide venues, typically for performers from that country, while others will cover all or part of the artists’ travel or performance costs. It’s worth mentioning Trafó, “which funds the festival programmes every year, but while for a long time we were able to finance the entire programme of that festival day with their grant, Trafó cut this budget by a quarter 2-3 years ago, and our programmes didn’t get any cheaper, so since then we’ve actually been putting money into Trafó’s day of the festival, too,” explains Krisztián. The NKA (National Cultural Fund) also contributes to the festival with about 10 percent of the budget, a sum that “is less than half of the ticket revenues”, says Krisztián.
There is a dilemma regarding the funding of the festival: the matter of volunteering at the organiser level. “UH has no employees, and being an organiser isn’t a paid job either. It was clear that a festival like this couldn’t be done without external support and funding, but we refused to let it be driven by anything other than a love of music and fundamentally doing the festival for ourselves,” says András. “I think it shows that this isn’t a job to us, it’s clear for the audience and the performers alike. If someone doesn’t piece it together through the emails, they will when they get here and get a whiff of what’s going on. I think this adds to the festival, the fact that we’re not doing it for the money authenticates it in some way – if we were, that would have a lot of other implications. We don’t have any corporate sponsors either. If we did, then a lot of our work would be about extracting the fees for organising it. And if you look at the festival’s budget, you’ll see that if we were to pay for our work and monetise what we put into it, we could only organise a 3-day festival, because the money for the other 4 days would have to go towards our salaries, and even then, I don’t think we’d be paid that well. So it’s a slippery slope.”
Krisztián adds, “It is a difficult and complex question, yes. There’s no simple answer, and in principle, I never had an objection to it being a [financially] rewarding job, even if it is low-paid. I just don’t see the reality of a formula like this in Hungary at the moment. My drive to create the festival year after year always wins me over, but the fact of the matter is that self-exploitation is a dangerous game to play with an event of this size.”
LINEUP
UH has no curatorial theme this year. According to Krisztián, “there are many different sub-narratives of the festival, and we don’t piece [the lineup] together according to any global trend, but rather based on what moves us. Personally, I’m much more interested in the language of local music scenes, in micro-trends. Global trends are mainly communication-technological. For example, I think the scene in Bristol or Brussels, or the Flemish scenes are interesting, and they’ve also been present at UH for years, but they’re not necessarily highlighted in that way unless you connect the dots between the programmes of the different years. And that’s really okay that way, too. For example, we once booked DJ Brittle under a different name (Jackson Veil Panther), and now he’s going to be playing in town independently of us. Biped is one of my favourites this year, or Charmaine Lee, or even Donna Candy and Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm, and it’s lucky that they’re both included in SHAPE and can come as part of it. Donna Candy was originally due to come last year. But I could highlight so many others,” he adds.
András describes the basic idea behind the curation as: “it may sound like a joke to the readers when the festival text says that it connects scenes and venues, but just think about, for example, Stavanger, a Norwegian city of 130,000 people, and the fact that two bands that are based there, Psudoku and Death Songs are coming here to Budapest again this year, after three consecutive years of this booking connection. Kinga Ötvös is a similar example, signposting a Hungarian scene from Transylvania in residence.”
Most of the performers at UH are from abroad. “65% of the lineup is international, and we’re not only bringing them in from, say, two countries, but 15 at a time – 23 even, last year, which was a milestone even for us, by the way, not that we weigh these things up against each other, I just always check out of curiosity. This year, the number is much lower, making the lineup less colourful in terms of countries, but this wasn’t a deliberate move either, just like the fact that we will have three Norwegian performers [in addition to the two above, Maja S.K. Ratjke & Stian Westerhus, ed.] – it’s just the way the math worked out with the opportunities that came up,” – says Krisztián. “It’s understandable that countries with a stronger economy and more culture- and community-conscious politics, that are thus more plugged into the bloodstream of world music with more open societies will bring out an increased number of exciting, ‘exportable’ artistic productions. These countries promote their exports in a conscious and intelligent way. This is another reason why some countries might be less or more represented [within UH] than others,” – adds András.
The Hungarian aspect of the UH lineup is always an interesting topic of conversation in the scene/profession. The way Krisztián puts it: “it’s important to see that in many ways the Hungarian part of our line-up is one of our biggest challenges every year. On the one hand, we have a festival that happens once a year, for one single week, and on the other, there’s an entire ecosystem in Hungary that we’d want to showcase something special from. It’s easier to curate the international lineup in this sense, because we can’t possibly showcase everyone that we like. With Hungarian artists, the challenge is how we can pick out special acts, who we like, and who we want to challenge in some way perhaps, who, fortunately, perhaps perform relatively often, in a way that it’ll make a special event within the framework of UH. We never draft exclusivity contracts by the way, but obviously it’s an important practical note whether or not the artist we’re booking has played the same venue about 2-3 times within the last month.”
SHAPE residencies are another important instrument for bringing together local and foreign artists and creating new productions. “They allow us to pair one international artist with two locals. I’m really proud of them all, these will be our 5th and 6th residencies, one is a collaboration between Máté Janky, Péter Teller, and Khrystyna Kirik, a Ukrainian performer; and the other, as András said, is Kinga Ötvös, a Hungarian artist from Romania living in Berlin, who will perform on the opening night with Krisztina Sipos and pain. simpl; who they’ve known each other with since they were kids,” Krisztián continues.
Returning to the curation of Hungarian performers, “another key question to think about is what we can bring out of the local scene that surpasses the given arena. It’s always a challenge to see who we’re giving an opportunity to, who might bring something new, or who we just want to promote because we think they’re great. It’s a constant manoeuvring game. This year, for example, we have Protoplasma, which is a relatively obvious booking choice to put before Psudoku, but it was a decision that was also a result of the fact that Marci Bíró’s band is a really exciting group, who play very rarely, but we’ve known for the past six months already that they were going to be on the lineup, and that they would only have one show before then, if any, so they’d be putting this set together for the festival. Or there’s Fanni Csernovszky [Cy4ntist], who we’ve seen some exciting stuff from, but we have no idea what she’s going to put together with someone else [HiHelga], brought in on the fly by Fanni – I don’t even necessarily think that they know what’s going to come out of it. It’s an experiment in the most classic sense of the word, which is exciting for us,” says Krisztián.
András adds: “not to mention that those two will be playing in front of a band that will probably be the most popular act at the festival [The Body & Dis Fig], a duo that’s been playing together for 20 years. There will probably be a lot of people coming to their concert (maybe for just this one show out of the entire festival), who’ll be met with these two 19-year-old girls playing before them. Not your usual ‘opening band’ scenario”.
Other examples from Krisztián include “dj goodbye from Debrecen, who I just came across one day and liked what they did, distinguishably from a very different Hungarian environment. Or, for example, we asked Noise & Roses [a Budapest-based concert-organising collective – ed.] to bring us a concept, and they brought in an extra three people” and will perform as an ensemble. There’s also a tragic circumstance to contend with this year, which András tells us is that “for the past ten years, Attila Kalóczkai had been printing our posters for us, who Luspi [blindblindblind] once booked to play together with Sándor Vály. Vály is also a guy over fifty, they used to play together in the late ’80s; then Vály left the country in 1990, but they started playing together again a few years ago. We felt that the concert blindblindblind had organised for them [Trafó, 20 April 2023 – ed.] was so moving that it would be important for us to have it at the festival, too. They were going to bring a completely new show called ‘Variations on Tragedy’ – but Attila Kalóczkai passed away three weeks ago. Now, the new plan is that the last poem Kaló sent to Vály to be the first piece in their UH show will be performed by Vály – just this opening piece – and the written text will be spoken in Kaló’s voice using AI”.
Krisztián’s last example is “Natalie Szende, who’s been performing quite a lot, she’s just played at the Hungarian House of Music, at Inota, and at a Noise & Roses night, to name a few. She moved back [to Hungary] recently to study at the Music Academy, but she’s certainly been a regular audience member at the festival [before]. So when we asked her to play on Friday, it was probably more of a personal thing for her, that she could perform at the festival she used to travel back from Berlin to, to visit. Things like this are important to us, they give us a lot; sort of like a full-circle moment, because we really put a lot of time and work into this festival, and if a Hungarian performer feels like it’s a special thing to play at UH and maybe put themselves out there and try something that’s a bit different, I think that’s wonderful.”
VENUES
Another exciting thing about UH is the different venues they pick every year. Some locations have become permanent staples of the festival, others disappear over the years, and there are almost always a few, shall we say, pop-up venues. One of my personal favourite UH venues in 2015 was the legendary Capella Café (where, needless to say, the word café is a strong understatement); and when I brought this up, the reaction from András and Krisztián was that there would be no “extras” this year. Which, if only minor, is an understatement yet again. The cultural institutions are exciting venues themselves, in my opinion; this year, for example, there will be a night held at the French Institute once more, which is interesting if only because these are places that the UH audience wouldn’t typically go to (for concerts, anyway). There will also be a programme segment in the Nyolcésfél building at the almost brand-new Nº space (pronounced as “no space”), and a whole day at AQB, where (pro tip) visitors can also take the train. One organisational drawback of the latter is that the sound systems have transported out there; hence why certain venues, such as Turbina, that have a fixed set-up of club/concert infrastructure are more convenient choices (there will be three days at Turbina this year). On that topic, another UH feat is that there will be multiple venues this year playing the Hungarian Mogul sound system, namely at the French Institute and Három Holló, and also at Gólya (where the venue’s fixed Mogul sound system will be customised to the festival’s needs).
And what will certainly be a noteworthy venue (and production) is Robert Curgenven’s virtual building(s) in Pope John Paul II Square, which can be “toured” using a phone (with GPS coordinates) and a headset.
TEAM
UH is organised and curated by three people, András, Krisztián, and Veszna Wessenauer, who coordinates the volunteers. They are assisted by Ancsa, their bookkeeper, Ime, who helps with administration, and they also have a Ukrainian intern, Lola, who joined them a week ago. The team also expands for the week of the festival with about 40 volunteers who practically make up the entire staff (accompanying the band, manning the merch desks, checking tickets, etc.).
Krisztián describes them as “the fabric of the festival. It’s quite an exhilarating experience every year, a tremendous energy boost. On the one hand, because we could never accomplish this without them, and on the other, because there’s this path of going from an audience member to a volunteer, and then from a volunteer to a performer in some cases, that several of our performers have taken, and that’s such a fulfilling, organic process to follow along. I don’t want to use big words, but it’s really special to experience this week as a part of a family like this one.”
As for the organising team, András adds, thinking back to how the team used to be, and how it kept reforming: “Lucia Udvardyova was there for a short time, and Gergő Kiss, to both of whom we owe a lot, and Marci Bertók, who was responsible for the graphics in the early years, and of course András Rónai, who’s been here while not being here for the longest time – a sort of spiritual patron of the festival. To this day, if someone has to jump in for a task because there was a situation, he’ll show up.”
This year’s design was created by Zsanna Kili, who joined UH in 2024 and “we absolutely consider her part of the team”, says Krisztián. “We’d been working with DE_FORM (Budapest based web design agency – ed.) for the past 6 years, and it always went well, but we’d also been feeling that we needed to open a new chapter, so we parted ways,” says Krisztián, describing the circumstances of the change. “They work to a very high standard, I think; some themes were closer to my heart than others, but each visual identity was very cohesive. Plus, they brought in a modular vision. Making a switch is always going to be challenging, to see that level of potential in someone else, but with Zsanna, we found our footing together pretty quickly. I really like her stuff. We’re also colleagues at Partizán by the way, so I already knew that we could work together, and she also DJed at the festival a few years back [Mystic Voip – ed.], so we’ve known each other for a while, I feel like it was meant to be. I particularly enjoyed that it was a collaborative process to create the new visual identity, that Zsanna encouraged that we stick our heads together while creating a visual world all on her own. She carried some of the old elements through, but also put her own twist on the whole thing.”
HIATUS
Next year, after 10 years, there will be no UH. “We made this decision after last year’s festival. Our resources are finite, and we feel like we’ve gone beyond our limits. We need to take a break both physically and mentally to rethink the whole thing. Even if we’d been doing this as a paid job this whole time, if you’ve been doing something for this long, it’s important to take a step back and look at it with fresh eyes once in a while: where we’re coming from and why we’re doing what we’re doing. We need to regroup and restructure ourselves, to think about how we can do this in a way that’s sustainable,”– comments Krisztián.
Let’s round all of this up with two top quotes.
“I think you should stop when you stop enjoying the gigs, or when you become physically incapable – like Derek Jarman, who went blind, which makes it hard to continue making films… not impossible though, for him anyway – somehow he still managed to keep going.” – András Nun
“This is the end of the second great era of UH.” – Krisztián Puskár
Do come back!
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Originally written by @gammaw for MMN Mag.
Translated from Hungarian by Gabriella Gal.
Lead image of Krisztián Puskár and András Nun by Gábor Nemerov.
This article is brought to you as part of the EM GUIDE project – an initiative dedicated to empowering independent music magazines and strengthen the underground music scene in Europe. Read more about the project at emgui.de.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.