TO find folk tunes to perform, the Budapest-based folk singer Marta Sebestyen and the ensemble Muzsikas take regular field trips, most frequently to the tiny villages of Transylvania.

''We find the best music at weddings,'' Ms. Sebestyen said, ''where the tradition is that the musicians aren't allowed to sleep or stop playing for several days. The music and poetry and dancing go on and on and there is an incredible feeling of catharsis.''

Ms. Sebestyen and Muzsikas will bring those folks songs to their performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow at 7 p.m. The four instrumentalists in Muzsikas (the word means village musician), along with their regular guest artists -- two dancer-choreographers and Ms. Sebestyen -- are all trained folk music scholars. Yet their performances of the traditional czardas and other folk melodies never hew to the academic but are wildly exuberant, often to the point of frenzied abandonment in the tanchaz (dance house) tradition.

''You could never learn this music from a book or from the notes,'' said Ms. Sebestyen, who learned her art from her mother, who was herself a student of the composer and folk music collector Zoltan Kodaly. ''I go to the old village ladies to learn their tricks. I can't explain what I am doing. Bartok said folk music is a natural phenomenon, and really I sing the way a bird flies.''

The haunting music of Ms. Sebestyen and Muzsikas was featured in the 1996 film ''The English Patient.'' The international attention that followed secured their reputation as the most prominent ambassadors for Hungarian folk music, a tradition distinct from Hungarian Gypsy music.

''Folk music is really freedom,'' Ms. Sebestyen said. ''You can change any note or rhythm or word to fit the situation. And yet, the melody can date back a thousand years -- it is like digging down to find ancient and beautiful things.'' JOHANNA KELLER

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