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.

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.