Sound of Prague and My Story
Prague is such a magical city with its narrow streets, old Central European castles and bridges, green hills, cafés and pubs with a lot of live music. It has inspired many artists, and also I decided to stay for a while. I first came to the city in 2014 and ended up spending there three years focusing on writing songs and performing my music.
I was living in the neighbourhood called Vršovice, two blocks away from the street called Krymská. We were so proud when New York Times named it as one of the most interesting streets in Europe. It’s a small street full of cute cafés, vegetarian restaurants and bohemian bars. Indeed, Bohemia is the name of the largest historical region of the Czech lands where the capital, Prague is located as well. The word “bohemian” meant originally a citizen of Bohemia, and that’s one of the words how I could describe the life in Vrsovice.
Prague and the whole Bohemia are famous for its beer. At first it was a little cultural shock - a positive one though - seeing that for the Czechs it was totally normal to have beer at lunch breaks or sometimes even at breakfast. However, a lot of beer means a lot of bars and pubs, and that means a lot of live music and opportunities for musicians to perform.
One of the first people, that I have to thank is the legendary music journalist, Petr Dorůžka He introduced me to the live music and many cool places of Prague. Mister Dorůžka is like a walking wikipedia - he knows incredibly lots about music and history. It was not a surprise that in 2017, he was Professional Excellence Award Winner of WOMEX, the most important international world music conference. Nevertheless, he is a person who always listens and is curious about the thoughts and stories of different people - no matter of their age, gender, cultural background or experience. I respect him a lot.
The person who encouraged me a lot as a musician and a songwriter was my dear flatmate, a Slovakian singer-songwriter and jazz violinist, Nina Marinová. She is a genius composer, has a really cool voice and a lot of flow. She is the frontwoman of NINA ROSA and Dub Artillery, and bands like Zrní are inviting her to sing with them on the main stage of Colours of Ostrava, the biggest festival in the Czech Republic.
It was a big honor that Nina wanted to make music with me. We started an acoustic duo called Les Flatmates performing my songs, Nina’s songs as well as cover songs from around the world in different languages. We played almost everywhere - in the bars, boats, livingrooms, fashion events, streets, trains, rock festivals, pumpkin festivals, wine celebrations… and got to tour around Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. We were mainly a live band, but we recorded one song, Krymská with the producer Jen Hovorka, talking about the life of our neighborhood - of course.
We were like sisters and I feel really thankful for knowing her and spending so much time together. Some people really believed we were a couple. I’m definitely a better person and a better musician because of her, and she is still one of the most important people in my life.
My guitar was made by Nina’s father, Stanislav Petko Marinov who has a guitar company called Dowina located in Bratislava. Mister Marinov is half Bulgarian, and like a walking jukebox of Bulgarian traditional music. In addition, he has done professional paddlesports with canoe. In 2015, we made a canoe trip together from Slovakia to Hungary along Danube. At the beginning we were 6 people with 3 canoes, 2 people in each one. But one of the canoes broke and at the end we only had 2 canoes and 3 people needed to fit in each one. That meant that two were paddling and the person in the middle was playing guitar and singing in the meanwhile. After three days of travelling we arrived to Budapest and had a Les Flatmates concert. The audience thought we were joking about arriving in the canoes with all the instruments...
From time to time, I was also singing backing vocals at Dub Artillery’s concerts. It was fun because the band had a rehearsal room at CrossClub, which is sort of a cult reputation club, and the shows of the band were often full. Some of the fans were really passionate and once someone told that he “grew up with the music of Dub Artillery”.
When talking about Prague, it’s necessary to talk about Bára Zmeková, who is definitely one of my favourite people in this planet. She sings in Czech, and although, I don’t understand a word, she has an ability to move something inside of me just with her interpretation. In addition, she plays the piano like a Goddess. I’m so happy to see that after the release of her album “Lunaves” there is a lot of buzz going around.
When I first met Bára, I didn’t have a clue how much energy that woman has! We played a show together at Kino Šiška, in Ljubljana, and after the concert we went to a club where you could sing karaoke on the stage. The club was totally full and after singing karaoke, Bára jumped to the audience and started crowd surfing.
However, many of my friends in Prague were from the Balkans and ex-Jugoslavia. I had an opportunity to travel to the Balkans and be introduced to the amazing Balkan music. Thank you especially for Srdan and Filip who showed me a lot of Balkan art and welcomed me to their homes in Bosnia.
In fact, you can hear a lot of Balkan music in Prague as well as Roma music. Roma people are a big minority in Czech Republic and Slovakia, and unfortunately, there is a lot of discrimination. However, the music that they make is virtuoso and there is a great festival in Prague called Khamoro representing the Roma music and culture. The queen of Czech Roma music was Věra Bílá, who recently died this year.
For me the sound of Prague is a mixture of Slavic and Balkan music, Czech and Slovak singer-songwriters, Roma music, gypsy swing, jazz, classical as well as dub and drum’n’bass. Please, listen and follow my playlist “Sound of Prague” on Spotify.
Some of my favourite events and venues in CZ and SK:
Khamorol Roma Music Festival Rachot’s world music concerts at Palac Akropolic & Respect Festival Jeden svět film festival Korso Krymská Zvuk for Stiavnica in Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia Pohoda Colours of Ostrava Colours Meeting Folk holidays United Island Bars on the Krymska including Cafe V lese, Sladkovsky and Bar V Krymsky Avoid Floating Gallery & Naplavka Jazzdock