Czech bluegrass

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Czech interest in things American dates to the nineteenth century, and is suffused with luminous conceptions of the Old West, cowboys, American Indians and other iconic images. Czech tramping emerged as its main vector after 1918 in the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. Tramping in this sense is a Czech-specific blend of ideas taken from Scouting, the German wandervogels, and Americanist romanticism. The music that accompanied the movement (Czech tramping music) was a blend of Czech folklore, early jazz and other “syncopated music”, such as barbershop, harmony singing, and popular songs from the U.S., France, and elsewhere. Czech tramping enthusiasts quickly incorporated the sounds and “style” of Bluegrass when they first heard this music in the late 1940s.

Czech hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1980s and 1990s#

Hip-hop culture, or rapping as a vocal component of hip-hop, has been developing in Czechoslovakia since the 1980s, mainly in large cities such as Prague, Brno, and Plzeň. The first instance of what can be called hip-hop in the country is attributed to Lesík Hajdovský and his band Manželé, with their 1985 hit song “Jižák”. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the Prague-based award-winning group J.A.R. performed a blend of hip-hop, rock, and funk, remaining active to the present day. The trio Rapmasters, active for a decade starting in 1989, fused hip-hop with dance, releasing five studio albums during their career. The group WWW issued their first demo in 1993, and they have remained active to this day. One of the most popular groups of the genre are Chaozz, active from 1995 until 2002 and again since 2017, who spun off the duo Prago Union in 2002. The group Syndrom Snopp formed in 1997 and disbanded in 2006. The duo Indy & Wich formed in 1998 and remained active until 2006, putting out two studio albums. 1998 also saw the creation of Pio Squad, a hip-hop group based in the city of Jihlava. Naše Věc, a group based in Brno, released two studio albums between 1997 and 2006. The eastern city of Zlín saw the birth of DeFuckTo, active from 1999 to 2016.

CZ on Music Theory Print

Czech bluegrass

Background#

Czech hip-hop

1980s and 1990s#