We arrive in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. Now, as I said I have never been to Slovakia, but we had a young woman from Slovakia staying with us for a short while last year and I asked her for recommendations for music and her father suggested a folk band called Radio Edit. I don't know much about them or whether they have published any music the sparse information available for them is in Slovakian, but they play an international influenced style of folk on acoustic instruments and sung in Slovakian. Here is a song of theirs called Koniec Sveta, which apparently means end of the world:
Although from Bratislava folk ensemble the Michal Noga Band very much draw on the traditional music of the Slovakian countryside inspired by Gypsy bands of the Horehronie region as well as Wallachian shepherds, Hungarian tunes and bagpipe music of the Upper Orava region, all led by the fiddle of Michal Noga and accompanied by more strings, a cimbalom and song. After some years of collecting material and playing at weddings and events they have released their debut album Stopy last year. Here is a tune that mimics the national instrument the fujara flute on fiddle. It's called Dušikova Fujara:
In 1990 5 friends got together in Bratislava to form a band to play at another friends wedding. Only one of them had any formal training, but they wanted to play traditional Slovak folk. The performance at the wedding was such a success, that they were asked to play at other events and even concerts, and so the folk band Muzička came into being. In the subsequent years they diligently researched old folk songs from the various regions of Slovakia, listening to scratchy old recordings and breathing new life into the genre. They have recorded a number of albums since, but are probably at their best live, where they invite the audience to participate and dance along. Here is a song and dance called Balocké / Dances from Čierny Balog:
For something a bit more modern from Bratislava, Romani group Kmeťoband, consisting of father and son Igor Senior and Igor Junior Kmeťo, have been mixing Gypsy sounds with electronic pop and hip-hop. Their biggest hit was a song called Amen Savore, which features on their album Vagabund:
Let me take you back in time to the dying days of the Iron Curtain and to the city of Trenčín near what is now the border to the Czech Republic. This where underground rock band Bez Ladu a Skladu started to make waves from 1985. They were renowned for their declamatory, deadpan vocals sung by the then 13 year old Michal Kaščák. The lyrics were political, which led to bans by the regime and according to the New York Times they were amongst the bands whose influence helped to bring down the Iron Curtain. They were active until 1997 and still occasionally get together for live gigs. Here's a song from their early days called Udavač, which means snitch apparently. Spying on your fellow citizens was of course very much encouraged by the Communist regimes.
On the final leg of our tour of Slovakia we stop at the town of Nimnica for something very traditional again. The Trombitáši Štefánikovci ensemble was founded in 2008 by various members of the Štefánik family. They specialise in the traditional shepherd's music of their home region of Puchov, playing traditional instruments such as shepherd's horns, trombitas and fujaras as well as bagpipes, mouth harps and cowbells. They released an album in 2017 called Grúňom Hore. Here is a sampler of their music:
That concludes our tour of Slovakia, next up we will visit the Czech Republic. In the meantime, as usual, you can follow my virtual trip on my Tripline map.
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