Attila Koszits

Attila Koszits (Pécs, 1948) is an Hungarian journalist, radio editor, music and art specialist, and university educator. Originally, he obtained a degree in engineering. In the mid-1960s, he started to acquire singles and LPs and tape-recorded copies of music played by popular foreign and domestic bands. By this time, drawing on his education in music, Koszits himself played in a beat band. The music was influenced mostly by the hit songs of his own disc and tape collection. In 1968, he was asked to make regular disc show programs as a DJ (he continued to be an active musician until 1973 in different beat, rock, and jazz bands). As a punk and new wave DJ, he regularly performed, for instance, in the Club of Józsefváros and the Cultural Centers of MOM and Almásy Square in Budapest. He contributed as an organizer, a presenter, and a music expert to artistic events held in Pécs. In the meantime, he also took active part in music life as a documentarist and journalist who wrote on music events, as well as an expert in media communication (a radio reporter and editor of music programs). His array of interests and the many ways in which he engaged in the music world in Hungary at the time made him more than an average music enthusiast or amateur musician.

Systematic development of his collection with new acquisitions became a regular practice of the collector from the late 1970s. In 1980, Attila Koszits was asked to hold rock historical presentations, and thus he needed to organize his accumulated acquisitions. He tried to fill in the lack of decent scholarly Hungarian rock historical publications by acquiring a large number of foreign books and papers, and also by making better use of his own ever growing collection. He was commissioned by the official organization of TIT (The Society for the Popular Use of Scientific Knowledge) to hold a series of 25 presentations, including both works of music and slides and covering all styles and periods of rock music history from its start in the 1950s.