Czechoslovakian Folk Dance Book

I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop in England (as is my wont) when I came across a wonderful little book on Czechoslovakian folk dance. Not only does it contain some lovely colour plates of dancers (such as those shown here) in local folk costume, but also musical and dance notation. This was a book published "under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Ling Physical Education Association" and its aim therefore was to get the reader dancing.


The author - Mila Lubinova - also talks about the context and origin of the dances and their regional variations. The Kalamajka (shown directly above) comes from our part of the Bohemia with another form present in Slovakia. Also from our neck of the woods is the traditional sword dance , in which the dancers are linked by the swords held at hilt and point and never let go throughout the dance's complicated windings. Unlike in neighbouring Germany and Austria the dance kept its village roots in Czecho, together with its attendants dressed as fools or in animal masks. This dance is particularly performed with the arrival of spring (sometimes at the Czech carnival - Masopust). As for the music to the sword dance, a few melodies from the 15th century survive in manuscripts from the Zlata Koruna monastery, only a few kilometres from our home.

Celebrations of the Five-petalled Rose - Music

The Cesky Krumlov was full of music for the Celebrations - concerts, buskers, music in the processions. The Town Square featured prominently a stage from which amplified music (not entirely to my taste) blasted out, there were some indoor venues for classical concerts, and music as I have already mentioned in my previous post played an important part in the processions.


But my favourite music was what one might call "found" music, music which one just comes across when doing something else. This was very easy to do. In the case of the bagpiper he was tucked between stalls in the craft market in the Castle Courtyard. Then also in the Courtyard on a green in the centre there was an area where children were entertained and entertained, here I watched this recorder troupe from a local school (sorry my only picture of them is in the procession) and I must say they were very good given the age range in the group.


The last found music I want to blog about was perhaps the most fun. I was walking past the Koh-i-Noor artshop when my attention was drawn to an open window on the first floor of a building nearby. From it on a string hung a saucepan, into which a man at the window was urging the crowd in the street to put some money. When someone in the crowd paid up, music was struck up and a quartet of musicians passed one by one by the window, like the horloge on Prague Townsquare. The music was traditional Czech folktunes and the crowd cheered its approval.

Iva Bittova

Back at the turn of the year I blogged about local musicians Kvinterna. So I reckon it is about time I talked about another favourite musician of mine – Iva Bittova. She is an artist that I came across on the world music website Calabash Music. I downloaded an album and was hooked.

Bittova is an artist whose every album I religiously buy. I have yet to be disappointed or bored - the great thing about this wonderful Czech artist is that each album she produces is different and totally unlike anything else you have may have heard from anyone else. Her music is fusion music at its most varied, bringing together the Movavian folk music of her childhood, jazz, the avant-garde, nursery rhymes and classical. Whilst she does get extraordinary sounds from both her voice and violin, Iva Bittova also can be melodic and sublime.

Nowhere is this more evident than in her moving and heartstopping performance in Godar's Mater – a suite on the subject of motherhood for female voice, choir and baroque string orchestra. I bought Mater shortly before Christmas 2006 and played it obsessively for a week, and with each play I found myself crying during the Stabat Mater.