Kalman Magyar is engaged in many activities geared towards preserving, sharing, and building a legacy for Hungarian folk culture for future generations, particularly in North America. He created and hosts Tanchaz Talk, the world’s only English-language program/podcast focusing primarily on Hungarian folk music. He was a longtime Advisory Board Member for the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum, and in 2003, he produced Visszhang (Echo) for Hungaria Records, a compilation of Hungarian folk bands from North America, the first of its kind outside of Hungary.
In 2023, he co-founded the Hungarian Folklife Association (HFA), successor to the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum. The HFA administers a network connecting organizations and individuals involved in preserving and sharing Hungarian folk dance and music, and provides information to the public about Hungarian folklife in the United States and Canada.
From a young age, Kalman studied at folk music camps and seminars throughout the United States and Hungary. His early music mentors included the legendary Transylvanian fiddler Sándor Fodor “Neti” and Béla Halmos, one of the Godfathers of the Hungarian folk music revival movement. He studied folk dancing with the likes of Sándor Timár and Zoltán Zsuráfszky. In 1987, he co-founded the Eletfa Hungarian Folk Music Band, one of the United States’ treasured assets of Hungarian folk music. He has continued to perform with Canada-based Gyanta, North America’s most popular Hungarian folk music group, after moving to Toronto in 2007. He has arranged music and created dance choreographies for many performing groups, including the Tamburitzans, Csűrdöngölő (New Jersey), and the Cleveland Hungarian Scout Ensemble.
As part of his continuing efforts to advocate for and build a legacy for Hungarian culture, Kalman has given many folklore-related scholarly lectures and presentations, including at the Institute of Musicology – Research Centre for the Humanities in Budapest, the Hungarian Open University (Chicago), and at conferences organized by the American Hungarian Educators Association. He has also taught violin and ensemble classes at many camps, seminars and workshops, including Csipke Hungarian Folkdance and Music Camp in Michigan, Balkan Folk Music & Dance Workshops in New York and California (Mendocino), and at the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum‘s Folkdance and Music Symposia in Pennsylvania.
As a leading proponent of bringing Hungarian folklore to the global stage through media, Kalman has performed on CBS’s nationally televised Sunday Morning show and has appeared live on Toronto’s Breakfast TV show, WQXR and WFMU radio stations, WNBC television in New York City, and DunaTV in Hungary. To this day, his recordings can regularly be heard on various radio stations around the world. Kalman’s music has even been featured on soundtracks of films such as The Maiden Danced to Death (one of the six films shortlisted for the Hungarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar Award in 2011) and Mix, a Lovy Brothers film.
Kalman’s work with respect to his folklore-related activities has been profiled in several Hungarian media outlets, including in the Magyar Nemzet, Kanadai-Amerikai Magyarság, Hungarian Conservative, and Folkradio.