Yet another retrospective entry, this one about the second-to-last evening in the Sumava with the Roh crew and associated other folks. There was no jam that night, just a circle (in the same position as when we were playing) around the table outside, drinking, smoking, talking. Talk was often about music, and there was a lot of talk about bluegrass that was entirely relevant to my work -and my project was a topic of discussion. It was great to be part of this ring of words.
Zbyněk Bureš was a big part of the evening’s ranging conversations, and he addressed a lot of the questions that I launched into the fray. I forget how, but we got on the topic of “country” as a term used in the Czech Republic / Czech language. Zbyněk got going on this one, laying out how here,”country” when applied to music is a pejorative term, associated in Czechs’ minds with horses, “fantasie,” on escapism based on old-fashioned imaginings of “Amerika.” This definitely jibes with my experience.
I countered with another question – “so why does that matter?” There seems to be a genre issue that impinges on identity: “…If I tell someone I am playing ‘country’ they think of Country Radio, horses, the Nedvěd Brothers – NOT Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc.” That first batch of signifiers points to what is best termed “Český Country,” and is probably best typified and even defined by what is played on Country Radio.
There is also an element of connoisseurship – the identity part. Zbyněk is passionate about U.S. Americana music, and I can see how Czech country and the popular uses of the term encroach on a set of sounds, repertory, style (the US hard country aesthetic, it might be called) that he holds dear. With Zbyněk there is also a lot of concern for technique – whereas most Czech Country is sung in Czech, Zbyněk has an outstanding vocal ability that he deploys to sing soaring bluegrass tenors, rumbling gospel bass lines, and to croon baritone country ballads – and I’ve only heard him sing in Czech a few times..ever.
Zbyněk told a great story about the first Czech stilkytara (what I would call a pedal steel guitar) that illustrated to me his relish for the obscure details of country–it basically boiled down to the fact that the guys who were intent on making the instrument couldn’t figure out how to play the chords and melodies they heard on recordings or what those wierd pedals did – until one day in the pub, one of them suddenly found the answer – “Hey! what if they change the pitch?” He told the story to illustrate just how foreign the recent Czechoslovak/communist past is to the present day (along the lines of “we can’t understand that period – what it was like to discover American instruments and sounds for the first time”) But I see that past, in all its exuberant discovery, in Zbyněk’s face as he gets into vocal harmony, or plays his own pedal steel.
The highlight of the evening (and there were many glowing spots) was when Zbyněk turned the tables on little-old-researcher-me, asking what the point of my project was. I tried to boil it down into one sentence – here’s the dressed up version: “To write about how ‘Americanness’ has value [function?] for Czechs who play and otherwise deal in bluegrass-influenced musics.”
Everyone seemed ok with that main thesis, but things got a bit rowdy when I started listing my chapter headings – “Fiddle?!” Zbyněk retorted, “why not write about an instrument that Czechs play well…like the banjo?” I had a chance to talk through my interest in and focus on boundaries and margins, the awkward points that indicate “in-between’ness” and ongoing cultural work. I’m curious why fiddling isn’t as highly refined here as plucked instrument playing – or at least why so many people insist that it isn’t.
Zdeněk got my back at one point – “He wants to talk to normal people.” NOT the big stars that folks around the table listed off as being important to bluegrass history here–Kůs, Vyčital, Křešt’an and the rest. As we mulled over who exactly would be the best people to ask about CZ BG, the conversation moved to complaints about a set of contributors on the www.bg.cz web chat forum, and how they dominate the discourse online. Zdenek added that a lot of junk gets talked on US forums, such as the “banjo hangout,” where someone had been trash-talking European banjos in response to a post about Zdenek’s “Rolls” instruments.
Zbyněk related a story (lots of stories were hoisted this evening) about a 1930s survey that accurately predicted a Roosevelt victory because it polled a sample that reflected the voting electorate–this all to say, these folks are aware of the tasks involved in trying to address a community and its “worldview,” and are at least receptive to my work in examining, “pooling” a wide set of folks here, guided by a sensitive cultural awareness and as well as my own investigative agenda. And they seem ready to talk about what I am doing, which is the part of this evening that I am most excited about.
I didn’t bring up ethnicity that night, not wanting to get into that area before I am prepared to talk about it–I still don’t even have the vocabulary I would like to use in talking about “whiteness” in Czech. Fortuitously enough–again–I didn’t have to bring it up. In a loop of talking that arced out of the historical/Americanist side of things, Zdeněk threw in a story about a visiting Californian [Who?! - Zdeněk - can you fill me in?] who, after seeing the Czech western garb, positioned himself on the “cowboy” side of that iconic split between cattlemen and native Americans–apparently his father is a rancher and identifies with the wranglers. But Czechs–in Zdeněk’s story and around our table–usually take the side of the Indians–the verb used was “fandit,” the same word used with regard to your favored football team. [that's a complicated thing to say--anyone have any thoughts here?] After various excurses on the plight of native Americans, the nature of the Europeans who settled the U.S., someone compared the situation to that of Czech Roma–and was quickly answered by a speaker who said “I wouldn’t fandit gypsies!” At that moment Zbyněk looked across the table and said, “It’s like that in the states with blacks, right?” And all the blocks fell in to place – ethnicity and Americanness ARE tied to things here. there a lot more to be addressed here, but for now, I just demurred: “It’s hard to say.”
I went to bed soon after, but the conversation rolled on, talking about Czech musicality with regard to other central European countries, the divide between Bohemia and Moravia–or more broadly, how regions of the CZ Rep. have different ways of playing, are dominated by different bands and traditions. I walked away with all sorts of sparks kindling in my head, so many things to follow up on – and at least a preliminary assurance that I really am barking up the right tree–at least I’m after some of the things that folks here deem worth considering; heck, they/we spent a whole evening talking about it!
