Known more for hockey pucks and beer, the Czech Republic is not the world's leading exporter of folk music to the United States. Perhaps it can be attributed to the fact that Czechs, as an ethnic group in America, are not as large or as united or as vocal, as, say, the Irish or Germans. The Czech Republic however, does indeed have a unique culture, and it is more wonderful than most people might have realized.
Last week, Czech folk singer Jaromir Nohavica performed for what seemed like every Czech in realistic traveling distance from the Czech Embassy. Every seat in the room was filled with eager fans.
"He is a constant. He was very active during the days of the resistance, but he managed not to directly address the regime. He was very poetic about it," said one avid Nahovica fan about the musician's lyrical content.
Displaying deft finger picking skills on his acoustic guitar, his songs were deceptively simple. However, the guitar served merely as a background for his singing. Equally raspy and romantic, his songs transcended any language barrier and struck straight for the heart of the listener on his more melancholy ballads. Not that there was much of a barrier to cross; many in the audience were clearly familiar with his work and sang along to the words of most of his songs.
Not all of his songs were bleak and "Eastern European" sounding, as might be expected. His sense of humor was apparent in one particular song in which he sang from the perspectives of two people, presumably a woman and an old man. During the verses where the woman sang, he would look in one direction and sing in a high, soft voice. When he sang as the man, his facial expression changed so that one could almost see a very old man rasping in a cancerous croak, looking at his presumed female counterpart.
He seemed to evenly split his set between his acoustic guitar and an accordion called a heligonka that has been in his family for nearly a century. Acquired in the 1900s, it has been passed down throughout the generations, eventually winding up in his hands.
The accordion made the songs sound less universal (to the average non-Czech listener), yet the songwriting was still powerful enough that the accordion only served as a different kind of backdrop; like using a different color when painting, so to speak.
The bare-bones instrumentation of his songs allowed his songwriting to take center stage, allowing Nahovica to really shine. It's no wonder that he's so popular in his home country, and he has the potential to reach many more listeners than only those from or familiar with his home country.
There was nothing esoteric about his music and singing, nor was there anything resembling the things that render much foreign folk music "inaccessible," like odd instruments or overly exotic sounds. The fact that he was able to communicate so easily to his audience (including to at least one person who does not speak one lick of Czech) speaks to the power of music as a universal language. His songs were very much like folk songs from America's heartland, only in a very different language. For some reason, his music transcended barriers, both linguistic and geographic.
Truly, Nahovica is a talent, and to watch his performance could have appealed to any fan of music. It was stripped down and from the heart - the way it should be.
