Václav Neckář & Helena Vondráčková - Znám jednu starou zahradu (I Know an Old Garden)

I've realized that I haven't yet posted a single song from a "pohádka" - fairy tale; what a blunder that needs to be rectified!

Fairy-tale films, filmové pohádky, hold a special place in Czech culture. It started in the 1950s when filmmakers turned to adapting fairy tale stories into films as a way to escape the harsh censorship of the Communist Party. The first feature-film fairy tale was Pyšná princezna (The Proud Princess) from 1952, directed by Bořivoj Zeman. Even though it was highly ideological, it became the most-watched Czech film of all time. 

In the 1960s, the censorship was growing more lenient, and the Czechoslovak New Wave affected fairy tales, too. Directors were experimenting with genre and playing with established tropes. Many popular fairy-tale films implement elements of comedy. It has become a tradition to watch these classic pohádky during Christmastime, and since 1993, the Czech public-service broadcaster Česká televize releases a new fairy-tale film every Christmas Eve (and there would probably be public outrage if they didn't).

This song comes from the comedy musical fairy tale Šíleně smutná princezna (The Insanely Sad Princess), written and directed by the same Bořivoj Zeman who directed The Proud Princess. Ivo Fischer wrote the text, and the music was composed by Jan Hammer, Jr., who received several Grammy Awards after he emigrated to the US shortly after the invasion, and is known for theme music of the TV series Miami Vice.

The film was released in June 1968, and stars two of the biggest pop-culture idols of the time, later members of the group Golden Kids, Helena Vondráčková and Václav Neckář (whom you may know from the Oscar-winning film Closely Watched Trains). They play Princess Helena and Prince Václav, who were promised to each other as babies by their fathers, King Dobromysl and King Jindřich, to ensure peace between the two kingdoms. Both Helena and Václav despise the idea of an arranged marriage, and on the way to King Dobromysl's castle, Václav escapes his father's entourage. He accidentally enters the castle garden and meets Helena, but because they're both dressed plainly, it doesn't occur to them that the other may be the king's child.

They fall in love, and in an effort to make her father change his mind about the arranged marriage, they conspire on a plot inspired by a classic fairy tale, The Sad Princess (sometimes called How Honza Made the Princess Laugh). Unfortunately, the King has not read it...

The film creators took quite a few jabs at the regime, which were then disappeared for twenty years. For example, this exchange between the two kings' respective advisors, Iks and Ypsilon:

Y: We must take further...
I: Intrigues?
Y: Yuck! Steps in the common interest.
I: That's the same thing.
Y: But it sounds better.

Their duet Kujme pikle (Let's Conspire) was among the things that were cut out during the post-1968 "normalization", and it only returned after 1989.

You can read more about Czech fairy-tale films here; there's a Czech, Simple Czech, English, and Russian version of the article. The whole website is worth taking a look at; it collects information about Czech cultural and linguistic heritage and is funded by the Ministry of Culture.

Waldemar Matuška - Krysař (The Rat-Catcher)

 

I haven't posted here for a while (a long while), mostly because I've been either busy at work or had family issues. Apologies for that, and if you let me know that you like this blog, I will continue. I just didn't feel the need when I didn't have any followers.

However, in the current situation, a post like this might be relevant to at least a few people. 

There are plenty of Czech songs that reflect on the invasion of 1968, and I picked this one because I believe it reflects perfectly on current events as well. History repeats itself, unfortunately.

That being said, our Ukrainian brothers are putting up a fight that we were not capable of, they are the true heroes. The men who put their lives at risk at the front, the women who are strong enough to leave their husbands behind and take a step into the unknown, moving their children to a foreign country, often without any contact there, and everybody else who are just trying to survive in what looks like an apocalypse.

Sláva Ukrajině!

The song is a cover of Hugues Aufray's Le joueur de pipeau (The Pied Piper), Czech text was written by Ivo Fischer. It was recorded just a year before the invasion of the Warsaw Pact (mostly Soviet) armies in 1968, and it is harrowing in retrospect. And in present times, alas.

Monika Načeva - Udržuj svou ledničku plnou (Keep Your Fridge Full)

 Another represantation of the colourful post-socialist musical scene of the 1990's, this song is arguably one of the best punk offerings Czech music has to give. In her debut album Možnosti tu jsou (There Are Options, 1994), Monika Načeva combines Jáchym Topol's harsh, yet intimate poetry with straightforward punk energy and a cheeky black and white videoclip inspired by Patti Smith.

Jáchym Topol (brother of the late Filip Topol from Psí vojáci, which I covered on this blog) was not allowed to publish officially until 1989, but his poems were spread in samizdat. Udržuj svou ledničku plnou (Keep Your Fridge Full) is part of his first collection of poetry, Miluju tě k zbláznění (I Love You Madly, 1990, samizdat 1988). Since then, he has published a number of novels that were translated into several languages, and two of them were adapted to films.

Monika Načeva is a Czech actress and singer who often works with notable poets and musicians. Her work is astonishingly diverse, ranging from punk and rock to chanson or trip-hop. This is definitely not the last time you see her on this blog, because I find her one of the most interesting Czech musicians, and I highly recommend you go and find more of her work.

Karel Kryl - Dvacet (Twenty)

The holidays are coming to an end and I hope that you've had a nice vacation. This week marked the 49th anniversary of the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw pact in Czechoslovakia, so I think it would be appropriate to once again look at the brilliant work of Karel Kryl.

I chose his song Jeřabiny (Rowanberries) for my very first blogpost, because I simply cannot get enough of Kryl's masterful poetry. Today's song will be a little more complex, so that you can get the gist of why he's praised not only by casual listeners, but also by literature scholars. Dvacet may not be among his most well-known songs, but it is definitely one of my favourites. Kryl wrote it for the 20th anniversary of the invasion, in exile. In his later songs, Kryl tends to play with words and implement very subtle barbs at the Czechoslovak regime. He also criticized the people for not taking action and being compliant with the regime. However, at the same time, he was trying to inspire them to do something, and to give them hope.

Karel Gott - Lady Carneval

It is impossible to write about Czech music and not have an article about this amazing singer, so let me rectify this right now. Karel Gott's star rose to fame in the 1960's, and he continues to enjoy immense popularity to this day. He has won the national competition Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale, after 1969 Český slavík) an unbelievable number of 41 times (last time for 2016 - in 2017, at the age of 77!).

Ever since a young age, Gott was interested in art - he applied for studies of graphic arts, but he was not accepted and started studying to become an electrician. During this time he focused on music, and then went to the conservatory, where he studied both popular style and opera singing. Classical training gave his voice resonance, great range, and the ability to sing considerably difficult passages with ease.

In 1968, Gott asked his friends, composer Karel Svoboda and lyricist Jiří Štaidl, to write him a song that he could compete with at the Rio de Janeiro festival. They bought a liter of Myslivec, and suddenly Štaidl said the two words: Lady Carneval. Svoboda sat down at the piano, and within ten minutes, they had a song. And not just any song! It became one of Gott's signature songs, and was translated into 36 different languages.

Waldemar Matuška - Slavíci z Madridu (Nightingales from Madrid)

We can say without exaggeration that Waldemar Matuška was one of the most popular Czech singers of all time. With his fiery gaze, impassionate bass-baritone, but also a great sense of humour, he soon became the heart-throb of many a young woman in the 1960's and 1970's. People would often joke that young women could be divided into two groups: Karel Gott's fangirls, and Waldemar Matuška's fangirls (I myself proudly identify as the latter!☺)

An only son of a Vienna operetta singer, Matuška first got training as a glassmith, but his passion for music soon lead him to the theatre Semafor - a powerhouse of new talent in the 1960's - and soon became a huge star. Later, he started acting in films, his songs would be featured as title songs of many TV series. However, after he didn't return from the USA in 1986, all his work got blacklisted. His voice was erased from titular TV show songs, his latest record was destroyed, and his name was deleted from end credits. Films that he'd appeared in were forbidden. The 1990's meant a reneissance of his old songs, but even though he would hold many concerts in his homeland, he never returned from America to live here.

A popular practice in the 1950's, 60's and 70's was translating songs from the West. The originals often could not be played here at all, and people wouldn't understand them anyway. Sometimes, it happened so that the translation was somehow even better than the original - often completely changing the topic of the song. Especially popular were French songs, and that is the case of Slavíci z Madridu. Originally written as Rossignol Anglais by Hugues Auffray, it was used (similarly to Modlitba pro Martu) for the TV musical series Píseň pro Rudolfa III. (A Song for Rudolf III), from which is the video below.

Petr Novák - Já budu chodit po špičkách (I'll Walk on Tiptoes)

Let us go back to the sixties for a bit. This song was so popular in 1965 that rules of the radio hit parade Houpačka (Swing) had to be changed, because Já budu chodit po špičkách remained number one for a year and a half! It remains popular to this day, and it appears in film soundtracks and is regularly played on the radio.

Petr Novák's life story strikes as one of the rather tragic ones in the history of pop music. In his late teens, he was a big fan of the Beatles, and he and his two friends founded a band. They called themselves simply - "Beatles". Of course, before they made their first recording, they changed their name. In 1965, as "George and Beatovens", they recorded a few songs on a tape recorder and sent them to Jiří Černý, at the time director of the radio hit parade Houpačka. He picked two songs - "Já budu chodit po špičkách" and "Povídej" (Tell Me). The songs became an immediate success. Novák's two friends were drafted, but after their return two years later, the band resumed its track. This was the time of the greatest artistic success for Novák.

Unfortunately, again, the political circumstances came to play. Novák got in trouble right in 1969 when, at the music festival Bratislava Lyre, he declared a minute of silence for Jan Palach. Due to his popularity, he did not get an official ban to perform, but the regime that frowned upon western-influenced music and his notorious hard-partying and drinking (combined with not eating; at one point, he would have a beer instead of breakfast, and then another instead of lunch) encouraged organizers not to hire him any more. After his lyricist Ivo Plicka emigrated in 1975, Novák was never able to fully resume his once-promising career. After '89, there was a renewed interest in his music, but due to his anorexia, he was getting ill, and he died in 1997 (aged 51) of heart failure and total exhaustion of his organism.

His friends recall him as being incredibly sensitive and kind. This reflects in both his songs and his vocal performance - a high, tender voice with a melancholic, romantic quality. His songs cover a large variety of subjects - from a tender lover putting his girlfriend to sleep, to the confession of a dying clown, but what connects all of them is profound sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and contemplation.