HOBO: Forbidden Fruit, or File No. 31

If I were to list all the ways they tried to stigmatize me, how many political police cases were brought against me, how many years I was forbidden to travel abroad, how they banned my records, beat up my audience or me, and in how many counties I was forbidden to perform, it would sound like bragging nowadays.

Yet people still keep repeating: “It was easy for Hobo to rebel, with his deputy minister father behind him.” And yet hardly anyone rebelled — myself included. You don’t play the blues to rebel, but because you love it. Trouble only starts when they ban it.

In 2019, I wanted to obtain copies of the texts confiscated when I was arrested in 1972, including the draft of the Petőfi Oratorio. At the Historical Archives, historian Anita Molnár asked me whether I was interested in finding out what they had on me. She pressed a button on her computer, and the titles of 31 files appeared, containing 282 pages of material. I wrote this play based on those documents.

Only two of my albums’ worth of songs were banned: Kopaszkutya (Bald Dog), recorded in 1981 and released in 1993, and Tiltott gyümölcs (Forbidden Fruit), released in 1988. Eight albums, however, were allowed to come out — which isn’t a bad ratio, is it? Kex and Syrius didn’t get to release a single one. So where is the persecution? Under the system of the three “T”s — Tiltás (Prohibition), Tűrés (Tolerance), and Támogatás (Support) — we belonged to the category of “Tolerance.” They allowed us to perform, and I was well aware of that. This is what I wrote:

I am no flag at someone else’s celebration.

I am a pressure valve at the backside of the country.

Respectfully,

Hobo