About
It’s all in process: fiddling, ethnomusicology, marriage, faith, food, etc. (not in any particular order) And here in the Czech Republic, this process is taking place in a town called Prague – or in Czech, “Praha.”
Of course I am fascinated by the tradition of pseudo-etymology that glosses many place-names here. The name of the river Vltava has Celtic roots: “vlt aqua” – wild water, etc. “Prah” means “stoop” or “threshold” – as in the place you linger in passing, halfway between in and out, here and there. (there is a lot of legend and archeology in DeMetz’ classic “Prague in Black and Gold”)
In this blog and in my work I’m trying to give a sense of what bluegrass music IS in its transcultural Czech forms, through my experiences as a person living, performing, writing at the thresholds/boundaries of Czech-American,sacred/secular, performer/audience, scholar/not, … etc.
I’d like folks to read this, of course. And while I’m at the wishing well, I’ll hope that I’ll get some comments back.
23 October, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I’m an American living in Prague as well .. I grew up in Lexington KY so I’ve heard a lot of bluegrass. I’m no expert on the subject, but I’m interested in the idea of Czechoslovak influences on the development of country music. So many Czechs/Slovaks moved to Texas in the late 19th century .. of course the dobro guitar is Slovak in origin, I understand.
I was doing a pantomimie of cowboy step dancing the other day, kicking my heels and heel to palm, and my wife said it looked like Slovak folk dancing. Got me thinking …
maybe you know about this?
The fantasy of America and the tramping movement is also fascinating. They do a lot of civil war era tunes here “Old John Brown” etc .. I was surprised to hear it.