Music accompanies people in the folk tradition from birth to death, in all ritual and personal contexts. An anthology of Moravian folk music started to be released four years ago. It was intended to provide a complete picture of folklore as it can be really experienced in Moravia. Two parts were added to the first five parts this autumn. Six of the current seven albums were compiled by music publicist Helena Bretfeldová.
Who came up with the idea to publish the Anthology of Moravian Folk Music, and when did the idea get a specific shape?
It was five or six years ago. I had known the owner of the Indies Scope label Milan Páleš for many years – I continuously reviewed or used nearly all folk music, which Indies has released pretty much since the beginning of its existence, in my programmes in the Czech Radio. I think that I had a solid grasp of nearly everything that works in folk music in the Horňácko area and elsewhere. Milan had just returned from the WOMEX world music fair and was upset about how poorly we were presenting ourselves there. Each country had its booth, profile albums with folk music of the smallest of countries were available everywhere and they all were released with state support. We had nothing. So he talked to me and we thought about whether something could be done and what the concept should be. It was clear to us that it cannot be just one album – the original proposal counted with two CDs. When I was then writing a preliminary allocation by area, it grew to four albums. We agreed on a separate album for the Horňácko region where the continuity is uninterrupted and each municipality has its own view of the matter and its nuances reflected by local bands. The tradition for the last sixty years is well-preserved, which cannot be said about other regions. However, then we found out that Wallachia with Lachia and the Luhačovské Zálesí will take up a separate album, and the Dolňácko was split into two parts based on the proximity to the border.
The Anthology of Moravian Folk Music started to be released in October 2011 and the first five parts were out by December 2012...
The first four albums dedicated to areas were released at once – and it was a set intended for WOMEX 2011. When another year was coming up, we were thinking about how to complete the original set and this resulted in the Christmas album. It could be released on the market separately and simultaneously show one specific topic.
The break until the release of this year's two parts was quite long; did you consider the Anthology to be finished?
Yes, because parts 1 - 4 mapped the regions, though not fully, completely. We resigned on complete mapping because we were using material that was available on recordings. It would be a problem – perhaps even with copyright laws – to take the Brno area recorded by Hradišťan or the Horácko region where even very modern recordings exist. However, there is mainly a problematic historical continuity, of which we were certain in the mapped regions. As the author of the selection, I gave priority to those regions that I know well. If Milan had found someone who could process the other regions well, they might have also been included. However, the Anthology was closed for me in terms of what I could do for it. I had a fairly accurate idea of which songs and recordings I wanted to have there. I enjoyed, for example, comparing different productions of the same topic in various regions; here, the difficult task of producer Zuzana Pálešová, who entered into potential conflict with the bands, is not fully appreciated. Some of them were obstinately worrying about why we wanted this song and not another one in the selection – our bandleader is not playing in this one, there are some guest singers in that one, we will record it again, differently, better ...
The first four CDs were thematically broken down by major regions, then came the dividing by type of song – the first ones were Christmas songs.
We were thinking that with Christmas songs everyone knows what it is about...
...they are universally understandable and sell well.
That is one thing, but they are also easy to compare with songs well-known elsewhere, at least throughout Europe and America. When we show what continuity and ties to the Christian tradition they have in the Czech Republic, a comparison between individual places can be found. I put a little more work into it than in the regional selections. The explanations of our motivation and development of those songs, which began sometime in the Middle Ages, were quite important.
Then came wedding songs and folk songs (so-called verbuňk songs). Where do you want to go from now if you even want to go anywhere?
I missed working on the Anthology and I was quietly thinking that military songs could be similarly understandable as the Christmas. I think all folk art in every country somehow addresses war, circumstances of recruitment, impact of the once lifetime service in the army on life and family. Without me knowing about it, Milan was impressed by a programme of Magdalena Mucková focusing on wedding songs in Strážnice. When we met after that, I offered verbuňk songs to Milan and he asked whether I would be offended if Magda makes a selection of wedding songs for the next part of the Anthology. It is a topic that I would not go for, because I am not very familiar with it, and we reached the conclusion that these two topics could complement each other well. I think that the work of two different people is apparent on the two albums and that is a good thing. I do not want to have any monopoly of it.
So, do you want to continue?
I am starting to slowly gather material for lullabies and I hope that Milan will agree. Again, it is a topic understandable and comparable in all folk cultures, but I am afraid that, unlike military or Christmas songs, it will be difficult to find previously recorded materials – unfortunately, those are quite rare.
Simply put, folklore has two major functions: one of them is the need of personal testimony, the other one is utility music for events ranging from christenings to funerals. Which of them does your selection give priority to?
The utility function lives its own life. How it is played at weddings, how it is played at funerals, how it is played in what remained of folklore and did not become folklorism, that is catchable either directly at the moment or in a live recording. If we make a selection, we have to go for the representative function, the function of a sample. I am an "uneducated" folklorist, I have not completed proper academic education in the relevant field and I still have mainly an approach of a listener. And the listener does not care whether academia calls it folklore or folklorism. Either it is a miss for them or it catches their attention and they want to know more. My parents – natives of Brno – were so impressed with folklorists that they went to concerts of Moravská muzika led by Jindřich Hovorka in which both the Holí brothers sang. My mother went to a concert two weeks before my birth. I had a very reserved relationship with folklore for many years, it seemed too favoured to me. I always divided music into good, bad and brass, so I had a problematic relationship with folklore in the traditional brass version favoured by the socialist media – this was changed only with personal experience with the Horňácko festivities 22 years ago. When the opportunity came after many years of "work in the field" of folk music to put together a representative anthology of Moravian folk music, I considered my selection to be suggestions for consideration for domestic and foreign audience, mediation of the first step towards Moravian folk songs. Therefore, we included bios in the CD and wrote a selective discography for all artists to make them searchable. The Anthology was originally also intended for foreign markets. It was supposed to show Moravian folk music and in what form a visitor to Moravia can hear it today.
But you still had to set a boundary between authenticity and presentation...
Milan Páleš logically tended to push for as many bands and personalities, whose albums were released by Indies, as possible on the album – for example, he sought the maximum representation of the easily marketable Hradišťan. It was difficult to explain to him that today's Hradišťan and their current concept and interpretation of folk music are not a good representative of the traditional folklore of the Uherské Hradiště region for my concept of the album. I chose other bands. The Dulcimer Band of Jaroslav Čech was crucial for me because with them the historical continuity with the traditional form of local folk music is obvious. For example, I had to reject some perfectly played things interpreted by Technik in Wallachia and BROLN in South Moravia. It was, for example, the beautiful Horňácko music, which is not recorded otherwise and Czech Radio would have made it available to us, but the large-band production would not be authentic. You will not see that live anywhere in the region. The selection of the most interesting material was facing the limits that it must be possible to experience such music in real life. These two aspects, about which you asked me, were conflicting in me in that I did not want to cross the line towards "artistry". Originality, or perhaps earthiness was more important.
Is folklore not unreasonably idealised in all possible collections and then in the general perception as a pure personal testimony not spoiled by commerce?
That is exactly the view I had from childhood. Later, I visited the Horňácko festivities with my boyfriend, a contrabass player, and suddenly I was confronted with how folklore looks in a natural environment. Suddenly, the scales of artificiality, which used to be represented by BROLN for me at the time, fell off and suddenly everything was in its place, those people were not pretending. In a city school, someone, who is not capable of performing well in PE, can be degraded, it does not matter without a position. A person, who does not sign or dance, is degraded in the Horňácko region. And it is not artificially enforced, the kids grow up in it.
Sometimes, it seems to me that in the extremely utilitarian sense, the greatest successor of folklore is a dance with an agro-metal band.
Certainly, because the development continues and folklore continues to develops as well. There are bands that go far beyond Hradišťan or Čechomor. They only take a melody and then work with it as a material. Some time ago, Indies released a selection of Čarohraní which proves that folk music has its development. For example, Veselá bída by František Segrado, that is "folk-big beat" that uses Wallachian music as the initial source, to which it gives a distinctive form through his own arrangements. But if we have to show, where everything came from, we need to show continuous folklore and make it more comprehensive at the same time – that was the goal of our Anthology. It is a system that gives options: hear, enjoy, you can examine it further but no one is forcing you.
When we were sitting in a guesthouse room after the launch of the Anthology and Jitka Šuranská and Jiří Plocek were playing, it was excellent. However, when someone asked them for "something that everyone knows", they barely made themselves play Nepij, Jano, nepij vodu, they did not feel like it at all and they barely knew it. How is it possible?
What Jiří does and now mainly Jitka, it is ten times more valuable for folk music than Čechomor. You can tell that she knows what she is singing about, her reflection is experiences in a different way. However, she is not a pub musician, who plays over a glass of wine whatever people order, perhaps even "pačemu garíla smačíla...", an individual musician does not operate like that. But when a larger band gets together, there may be musicians with experience from elsewhere and they expand those horizons. Two are not enough – if ten of them are playing like at a wedding, one of them would surely start and the rest would catch on.
Records of folk songs started in the late 18th century, usually of lyrics, then scores of melodies were added, and the first primitive recordings came. Today, we have basically perfect technology available. What is are the advantages and disadvantages of recordings to a score?
Each of "our" singers has a certain charisma. That was also an important criterion for the selection. For example, Petr Ulrych likes to tell the story how he happened to be in a pub in the Horňácko region, in the native region of his first wife, where the band of bandleader Jožen Kubík was playing. His first reaction was: "Oh my God, he is out of tune, it is squealing, it is awful!" But soon he realised that the longer he sat there, the more he understands Kubík's uniqueness. That perfect intonation is not important, but instead it is about authenticity, the charisma of live music. The advantage is therefore in that we can hear the singers and musicians captured on authentic recordings and if we are lucky, we will hear them in their natural environment. All individually cannot be translated into words and the score.
Is it not true that each folk song has a sort of little myth?
Of course, most of them. This is also related to the topic, which I have in mind and of which I am a little afraid due to its depth and difficulty of selection – I am thinking about a representative selection of Moravian ballads, possibly on a double CD. It would be an opus magnum. Ballads are the black chronicle of their time, as well as personal testimonies of the artists. And I think that there is no better mirror of Moravian music than folk ballads and folk ballad singers with life experience. I am friends with Vlasta Grycová and I know that she probably sang ballads in a brighter, clearer voice thirty years ago, but the communicability, experience from her seventy years is somewhere else today. The same with Ms. Kománková, who may not remember all the verses of her favourite ballads today and sings a gentle tremolo, but that is not important – she carries the memory of the community and the region in her memory. Ballads should be a tribute to the best singers of the region. However, I am not sure about the universal communicability of ballads and how they would work in the range of CDs offered at WOMEX. We would have to discuss it with Milan.
Christmas is coming soon, what would you wish the Anthology now and for the future?
For now, I would wish that the parts, which have now emerged, were perceived as interesting, encouraging the audience to listen. That people, who play in those regions, consider it a positive reflection of what they do well and are not mad at us because we did not choose "their" verbuňk song. And for the future, I would wish to the Anthology that there is a reason to release other parts and that such reflection is necessary and someone listens to it.
And to yourself?
As much work as possible.
