Hangácsi Márton
I was born in 1989 in Zalaegerszeg. I was 9 when we moved to Egervár (a village near Zalaegerszeg). My interest in music soon surfaced and I started singing in the Zalaegerszeg Municipal Boys Choir. These years helped me a lot to avoid stage fright when standing on stage. Then, towards the middle of primary school, I became more interested in football, so music took a back seat for a few years. I started playing guitar at 13, and before that I played piano at beginner level. But with the guitar I started to feel something different, I was more engaged, I felt more potential.
At the beginning of high school I formed my first band, Under The Bridge. Along with my stage routine and musical development, it was then that I decided that I wanted to focus solely on music in the future. I played drums in the early years of the band and later started singing. We rehearsed a lot, played concerts (mainly in and around Zalaegerszeg) and made a record. In 2009 the band split up due to the different ideas of the members. This also contributed to the fact that I moved to Budapest in the autumn of that year, after my graduation.
I started to go to university, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do, so I left school after 2 semesters. The following year I went to the ETÜD music school. Here I had the chance to try a little bit of jazz music and realized that it wasn't my path either. After half a year I decided to start working and dedicate all my time to music. The job I started at that time only lasted me two days, so I decided to start playing street music.
That was a pretty decisive year and a half. At the beginning I loved it because I could play music and make a living out of it. However, as time went by, the negative influences of street music (police, aggressive homeless people, unfriendly people) made me realise that I could not do it for much longer. In the meantime, I started to attend the singing course at the Kőbánya Music Studio, where I met a lot of people and although I had some very good times, I didn't stay for more than half a year.
The crowning event of 2012 was the Veszprém Street Music Festival, which I entered as a contestant. I was very well prepared for it and finally managed to win the professional prize. It was a big turning point for me mentally, as the previous years hadn't been very successful, but after the winning festival things picked up a bit in terms of gigging. In the autumn, on my birthday, I also made my first solo EP, Front. The Hang-Art band was already in full swing that year. It was the realisation of a big dream, as I always imagined that there would be a band playing the songs I had written between the four walls. Unfortunately, despite all the time and energy I had invested, Hang-Art could not remain viable for long. We ended up recording one song in the studio and two live session videos with the band, and I also gained a lot of experience working with musicians.
After Hang-Art split up, I decided I didn't want a new band, I'd rather do things on my own as best I could. During the years with the band I worked on my solo songs, then in Hungarian. But after that big decision I also decided that I wanted to write English songs in the future, as I had done before in the band. I always preferred singing in English. I knew that it would probably be harder to assert myself that way, but somehow the songs didn't work in Hungarian. That's when I bought my first loop pedal and the new period that is still going on started. My concert at the A38, broadcast live on Petőfi TV, was a big boost. Many people got to know me and Petőfi Radio started playing my song "Keep Going" after that. Soon my first music video for the song "Don't Lose Your Mind" was released, followed by two singles, "Other Lovers" and "Right In Front Of Me".
In 2016/17, I was a winner of the Czech Tamás Programme's inaugural artist sub-programme, which helped me to make my first full-length album "My True Fairy Tale" and a music video for my song "One". "My True Fairy Tale" was released in May 2017. It spans almost 10 years of songs, capturing a stage in my life up to that point.
After the release of the album, I made a few live videos called Rooftop Session, where I performed several of my own songs live on a downtown patio.
In 2017, I released the Arany album "Arany János 200 Memorial Year", where I set the poet's poem Családi kör (Family Circle) to music.
In 2018 I released "Be Patient" as the first song of the upcoming album, for which I also made a music video.
In 2019, I returned to the Hungarian language after the English songs. The song "tizennyolc" was released first, followed by "Kapd el" (Catch it) with Szeder. Finally, in October of this year, shortly before my 30th birthday, my second album "<30" was released. The songs on the album were inspired by the lives and problems of people close to 30.
