Indie band Borka Balogh transforms intergenerational trauma into fairytale-like healing

Who: Indie band Borka Balogh. Lead-singer Balogh, who describes herself as a “sad girl from Eastern Europe making sad and dreamy music” on Facebook, is Hungarian-born, and Utrecht-based. Other members of the band include Marieke Berkvens, Remy de Kok, Moniek Roeloffs, and Jorn Kortooms.

What: Borka Balogh’s second EP, Femina Bellator, consists of three tracks, in which the force and delicacy of the lead singer’s voice rises to the rhythms of indie rock in songs that explore women’s struggles, and reflect on how to break away from them.

What they say: “The three songs present on the record discuss struggles of three different kinds that women — female warriors — go through. The songs: ‘Years of Breakdown’, ‘Light’, and ‘ALOM’, talk about the recurrent behaviour patterns that generations of women with trauma adopt and carry in their lives. As a whole, the EP does not only function as a bouquet of struggles, but it also breaks these patterns by taking the perspective of a new-generation female warrior with the ability to recognize her past, reflect on her present, and change her future.”

“‘Light’ is the most cathartic song on the record. It’s all based on a dialogue that I’ve been on both sides of. One party tries to dissuade the other party from committing suicide, but the roles in the music video blur — the viewers can decide for themselves what the white and black personas represent. Via this dichotomy, I wanted to convey, on the one hand, how terrible and painful it is to lose someone this way, but on the other hand, that for some people existence itself is an unbearable pain that they fail to cope with.”

Why you need to listen: With a fairytale-like atmosphere and romantic lyrics, Borka Balogh provides the soft, luminous voice that your indie music playlist needs when you feel melancholic on an Autumn day — or, perhaps, just need to dream a little.

​Listen to our Eastern European New Releases Playlist on Spotify.