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PART TWO: IDENTITIES, BORDERS, AND MEDIATIONS

Dreaming about the American West: Tramping and Country Music in Communist Czechoslovakia

Tomáš Pospíšil

Abstract

In the paper, I discuss the unexpected popularity of American-style country music against the backdrop of the Czechoslovak political climate, marked by the open atmosphere of the 1960s and the so-called normalization period of the 1970s. I identify the reasons for its popularity in the Czech tradition of tramping and its music, the literary works of Karl May, and similar adventure narratives set in the American West, the American and Czech Westerns (such as Limonádový Joe [Lemonade Joe]). I also consider the impact of the 1964 tour of Pete Seeger in Czechoslovakia. In the changed political and cultural climate following the invasion of the Soviet Bloc countries in 1968, I describe this musical style as a political vent, offering fans imaginary escapes into the American West. The performers of country and western music and their audiences shared a mutual complicity concerning the oppressive regime, imagining American landscapes, characters, and events. It is also evident that the regime tolerated American-style country music on the radio and TV, as well as in the recording industry, in order to provide listeners with a harmless fantasy of the otherwise inaccessible United States.

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1. Introduction

1In the fall of 2019, in a remote mountain lodge in the Jeseníky Mountains, a Brno IT manager invited his family and a circle of friends, including myself, for a weekend to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. The company that gathered for the occasion had relatively little in common with one another, as it consisted of some recent acquaintances, a handful of business partners, and numerous old-school friends whose life paths had diverged and meandered in multiple ways following graduation from high school.

  • 1 For an in-depth examination of the phenomenon, in connection with tramping, see Paulina Brenn´s art (...)

2The participants belonged to the same generation, except for the immediate family. Born at the turn of the 1960s, the invitees entered school during the political thaw of the mid-sixties, lived through the Soviet invasion in August 1968, and experienced how the conservative forces of the Czechoslovak Communist Party crushed plans for introducing a more humane socialist system of government. While most of the country was still involved in protests, the new leaders loyal to the Kremlin quickly established themselves as the new masters of the regime. What followed was the period of so-called normalization, with most of the population retreating into the private spheres of domesticity and the individual happiness found in the limited socialist consumerism and pursuit of private hobbies. These ranged from sexual adventures, through discovering the pleasure of working in one’s garden at the edge of the city, to spending most of one’s free time at a cottage or second home in the country.1 The inward focus on family life and easily obtainable government credit for domestic appliances resulted in a considerable demographic bump. In Czech popular parlance, the Baby Boom generation of the 1970s is even referred to as “Husák’s children,” named after the then First Secretary of the Communist Party and later President of the country Gustáv Husák, whose long rule symbolized the era.

3The school experience of the company in the mountain lodge was marked by social apathy, attendance at educational institutions where critical thinking was discouraged, and free debate of ideas was next to impossible, save among a group of trusted friends. Likewise impossible were attempts to experience the world firsthand, particularly when one was setting their eyes on the West, beyond the barbed wires of the so-called Iron Curtain. There, inaccessible, beyond the lines of service roads, electric fences, alarm installations, and lookouts for soldiers with their guns and dogs, started the world of liberty and wonderful things.

4As was customary on similar occasions in the youth of this generation, joint singing was on the program that evening in 2019. What was remarkable about the party was that not just the players with their guitars were singing from their songbooks, but practically all the people gathered there were singing along. It was apparent that these songs were firmly rooted in everyone’s memories, even after decades of not seeing one another and, in most cases, not knowing each other at all. The songs provided a social and generational glue, a shared common denominator for an otherwise heterogeneous company.

5The repertoire of the evening consisted of well-known tramping tunes, some original folk songs that have become universally known in the country, and numerous Czech country classics. An inevitable ingredient of the program was the song “Vlajka vzhůru letí” (The Flag Flies High), an old tramping anthem dating back to 1929, as well as Wabi Daněk’s legendary “Rosa na kolejích” (Dew on the Tracks). Among the popular folk songs were such time-tested gems as Robert Křesťan’s “Panenka” (Doll), “Tisíc Mil” (Thousand Miles) initially performed by Waldemar Matuška and Helena Vondráčková, and a touching tune about an American hobo named Frankie, “Frankie Dlouhán” (Frankie the Tall One), created by the protagonists of the band called Brontosauři (The Brontosauruses) to the melody of Glen Campbell. Most of the country songs on the program on that night were once sung by the popular 1970s country band, The Greenhorns.

6Thanks to the music, the company experienced, once again, precious moments of togetherness and sharing, reminiscent of the “old days,” when they would sit around bonfires at summer camps, in a pub after a day of hiking, or while attending a folk concert or festival. It was surprising to see that some participants would actively remember even songs that, in their day, did not seem to belong to the absolute top of the bonfire charts, such as the song “John Hardy.”

7The Czech lyrics of the song describe the fate of a “poor little thing” standing in an American gambling room, reluctant to join in a game of cards. A “brown girl” tosses a dollar on the table and commands Hardy to play. When Hardy loses, he kills the winning Chinaman and tries to escape the law by catching a train to the East. He somehow, however, gets the tracks mixed up, and the next thing Hardy feels is the Sheriff’s hand tapping on his shoulder. Hardy is handcuffed and brought to the gallows, with the singer overhearing his last words: “The gun is the only thing that is right!” The song ends with multiple repetitions of Hardy’s final message (“John Hardy”).

8This song was inspired by a relatively insignificant event in Dowell County, West Virginia, in 1893. The actual John Hardy, a railroad construction worker, killed a colleague over a game of dice and was tried, found guilty, and executed. There even exists a photograph capturing the moment before his hanging on January 19, 1894 (Bystroň 109). From the 1920s onward, numerous American singers have covered Hardy’s story until it found its way—in a much-altered form and Czech translation—into the repertoire of the Czech country and western band The Greenhorns. In 1970, the song was officially released on the compilation album Písně amerického Západu (Songs from the American West). This record was a phenomenal success and was actually repressed four times in the ensuing four years. Subsequently, thanks to the immense popularity of the album’s songs, John Hardy’s unhappy fate became well-known in the Czech lands.

9How come almost everyone was actively joining in? Why did such a temporally, spatially, and culturally distant event capture the singers’ imagination? What were the possible reasons for the enormous popularity of country music in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s through the 1970s? To better comprehend the sense of joyful togetherness the company savored while singing John Hardy and other similar songs, one should look at various cultural phenomena in the Czech Lands of the twentieth century, such as so-called tramping and its music, literature, and film. The strong influence of American culture and its mythologies can be identified in all of these. One should also be aware of the political developments and cultural policies of the day.

10What follows does not aim to offer a systematic and comprehensive survey of the above phenomena; other scholars, some of whom I cite in the text, have done so with much rigor and insight in their articles and book-length studies. Neither is it my ambition to offer a novel interpretation of the songs and films referenced here. Instead, through a personal, anecdotal, and unsystematic text, I aim to present to the interested international audience the impact of specific American cultural influences in concrete historical contexts. The somewhat randomly chosen material, along with commentary on its past reception and contemporary resonances, is to be understood as representing larger cultural trends that marked the shared experience of the generation growing up in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic during the 1960s and 1970s.

2. Tramping

11In the Czech context, a tramp is someone who loves life in the great outdoors and relishes the simple pleasures it offers. The origin of Czech tramping dates to the early twentieth century, when boys and young men, some of them freshly back from the battlefields of World War One, discovered a desire to turn away from the various trappings, monotony, and social stratification of modern civilization. Instead, they looked for nature, freedom, and a community of like-minded souls along the rivers and in the forests around Prague and other Czech cities. These retreats were not permanent, as they typically took place on weekends, national holidays, or vacations. The first tramps were working-class or lower middle-class men and women looking for a simple life in nature where existence was unpretentious and inexpensive. In groups associated with tramp settlements or on their own, these backwoodsmen and women roamed the country’s forests or meandering valleys of their favorite rivers. The love of freedom and nature was only a part of their pastime. Adventure was an essential ingredient. During these outings, ordinary Czech tramps refashioned themselves as Western heroes, adopting American-sounding nicknames and setting up an alternative existence in settlements whose names echoed the romance of the Wild West. Thus, the Sázava River, with many popular locations, was known as the Golden River, just as the train line running along its banks is known, even beyond tramping circles, as Posázavský Pacific (The Sázava Pacific Line). Similarly, other early settlements along the river Vltava boast a North American inspiration: Yukon, Ontario, and Santa Fe (Radtke).

12The tramps drew inspiration from the American 1930s’ westerns, Jack London, and his writing, and the illustrations of the Wild West by the famous Czech painter Zdeněk Burian. Their values, while never explicitly set down, drew on the ideas of Ernest Thompson Seton and the Woodcraft Movement. “They called themselves ‘wild scouts’ to distinguish between their pasttime and the institutionalized scouting movement that was then also taking root” (Brenn 129). There was a strict code of conduct. Fire, for instance, was sacred, and building it with modern technology was taboo, just as throwing a cigarette butt into the bonfire was a sinful act an orthodox tramp would not even contemplate.

3. Tramping Music, Country Music, Folk Music

13Before discussing how the theme and inspiration of the American West influenced Czech music of the late 20th century, it is necessary to introduce the three musical genres in question: tramping music, country music, and folk music. To encompass all three genres, Dickins uses the term “folk-spectrum music” and provides applicable definitions: “All three genres ... are broadly conceived ... to include those elements of ‘popular’ music which owe more to early twentieth-century Czech and European cultural heritage, as well as to American hillbilly, Western music, blues and gospel, than to other musical genres[.]” Dickins also notes that it is necessary to bear in mind that “in Czech, ‘folk’ refers specifically to modern folk, rather than to traditional folk music (lidová hudba)” (Dickins 651). While highlighting the difficulty of clear definitional delimitation between the three genres, Dickins reminds us of their respective senses of identity and traditions, and also of a “shared yearning for otherness outside the confines of the system” (Dickins 653).

14Tramping music has its roots in the pre-war tramping experience and was often inspired by American folk music. For tramps, joint singing by the fire in the settlement or in a pub was always a most cherished activity and an essential moment of identity building and bonding. Individual settlements had bands and tramp choirs, taking pride in their local songs.

15The opening of the 1960s brought about a veritable explosion of activity in Czech society, its politics, and culture, and the tramping music was no exception, with the number of bands proliferating. The period saw a generational confrontation between the older, traditional performers of classic tramping music and the singers and bands representing the newer style. “While the first, pre-war generation was musically based on a single guitar and a male choir (usually consisting of four members), the second generation of tramps used two or more guitars, a double bass, and sometimes even a mandolin” (Vondrák and Skotal 20). Among the most notable representatives of these newer developments in tramping music were Brontosauři (The Brontosauruses), Pacifik (The Pacific), Jaroslav Velinský alias Kapitán Kid, Wabi Ryvola, Miky Ryvola, and Wabi Daněk. The general trend of the day was away from the traditional tramping song, toward the other related musical genres, most notably, country and western music (as it was called then), bluegrass, and also modern folk.

16To better comprehend the artistic and political dynamics between the respective musical genres, it is imperative to address the distinction between modern folk music and country music. Folk singers from the 1960s through the 1980s, like the Western bards of the day, typically sang with their guitars, offering their listeners complex songs that addressed a wide range of contemporary issues, often relating to city life. Prokeš describes their artistic production as a conscious counterpoint to conventional, commercialized pop music, emphasizing concise, content-rich, and often insightful ideas. Their essence was their ability to respond in a timely, direct, and specific manner to various aspects of spiritual and social life (Prokeš 17). The list of noteworthy artists engaged in the production of modern folk music is extensive, and naming a few represents the danger of unjustly ignoring the numerous other relevant voices. Among the most sophisticated performers exemplifying this genre were Karel Kryl, Jaroslav Hutka, and, somewhat later, Jaromír Nohavica. Songs by all three bards are still staple singing material at social gatherings of the generation born in the 1960s.

17The country bands, such as The Greenhorns or The Bluegrass Hoppers, on the other hand, due to the variety of instruments they used and commanded well, offered their listeners a different kind of joy. Their voices, guitars, banjos, mandolins, harps, and double bass, along with some percussion instruments, not to mention their costumes, were all employed to create a specifically Czech, nostalgic, naive, and playful romance of the Wild West. Their music did not challenge their listeners with excessive complexity or nuance. While reworking American traditional musical material, as well as newer country and folk songs, the artists offered their audiences musical glimpses into an imaginary, glamorous past, and places with American and Mexican names a citizen of socialist Czechoslovakia could never hope to visit.

18Such strategies made country music more appealing to larger sections of society. Referring to a 1984 survey on the musical preferences of children and their parents, Vaněk notes that the genre Country and Folk”—which encompasses tramping music—was the third most popular among parents, following pop” and brass music,” with 12 percent of respondents among the parents favoring it (42). This burgeoning scene resulted in the composition of a significant number of notable tunes that, in subsequent years, became fully integrated into the canon of Czech folk-spectrum music. These songs also formed the backbone of the repertoire sung at the party in the mountain lodge.

19What unites typical tramping and country songs of the period is the shared love of American place names, characters, events, animals, plants, and mythical imagery. Many songs also express love of nature, one’s apartness from society, and the beauty and hardship of mobility. The band, aptly named Hoboes, sang about hopping on a train and waving one’s girlfriend goodbye (“Tak už mi má holka mává” [My girl is waving goodbye to me]) or about the crucial moment when a victim of the lynch mob is supposed to kick a whiskey crate where he finds himself before being hanged (“Bedna of Whisky” [The Whiskey Crate]).

20The popular bard of tramping, Jaroslav Velinský, alias Kapitán Kid (Captain Kid), for instance, sang a poetic song, “Krinolína” (Crinoline), with a refrain where imagery of the Czech tramping experience (drinking in the moonlit forest) merges with the myth of the American West: “Měsíc mě označkoval cejchovadlem lesů / sombrero z kaktusu si vyzývavě nesu / je moje láhev dávno dopita / a v dáli tepou kopyta” (The moon has marked me with the branding iron of the woods / I wear my cactus sombrero defiantly / my bottle is long finished / and hoofs beat in the distance). Regarding the use of respective cultural elements, just as in numerous other cases, American images far outnumber the modest Czech ingredients. Consider the final stanza of the song:

I Llano Estacado zná můj zpěv / u Tennessee jsem řval do hřmění stád / jsem zkřivený a hořký jako babí hněv / ač mrtev, přesto žiju napořád. / V nábojích prach mám z dálných cest / já brodil řeky, projel údolí, žíznil jsem v poušti, viděl tisíc měst / mám koně, laso, hlad a pistoli.
(Even Llano Estacado knows my singing / In Tennessee, I roared to the thunder of the herds / I’m twisted and bitter like an old woman’s wrath. / Though dead, I live forever. / I’ve got dust in my bullets from the far roads / I’ve forded rivers, crossed valleys, thirsted in the desert, seen a thousand cities / I’ve got a horse, a lasso, a hunger, and a gun.)
(“Krinolína” [Crinoline])

21While the song may almost sound parodic, due to the indiscriminate proliferation of American locations and activities, this is not the case. The song’s central theme is aging and the loss it entails, and the range of American images serves as a metaphor for longing for the lost youth, as inaccessible now as the legendary Wild West. The resulting feeling is that of bittersweet nostalgia. The singer, a self-professed worn-out Don Juan, is too old to savor the joys of (American) existence as it retreats into the distance of space and time. Yet he finds recourse in the simple pleasures of everyday life and being in nature. In his discussion of American country music, “The Jukebox of History: Narratives of Loss and Desire in the Discourse of Country Music,” Aaron A. Fox argued that country music functions as a cultural discourse that articulates and preserves the experiences of loss and desire (and social displacement) in modern American life. Captain Kid’s famous song, not surprisingly, contains both elements of loss and desire, transplanting Western imagery into the Czech context and creatively merging it with local natural realities.

4. Literature and Films

22It is a well-known and frequently commented fact that the intense Central European fascination with the romance of the American West has a crucial literary antecedent in the works of Karl May. Llano Estacado, for instance, mentioned in the above song, is also the location of one of May’s novels, The Ghost of Llano Estacado. Captain Kid’s inspiration is probably rooted in his reading of May. Of similar importance were Czech dime novels set in the American West that were published in the 1930s and 1940s under the name of Rodokaps (an acronym for the Czech Romány do kapsy, i.e. novels that fit into one’s pocket). Between 1935 and 1944, 407 such scrapbook novels appeared in regular editions, most featuring simple adventure stories set in the American West (Rodokaps). These novels were immensely popular, collected, cherished, and read by future generations in the decades after the series was discontinued.

23Captain Kid sang about a hungry rider with a lasso and a gun, and similar figures and objects saturated the yellow pages of the Czech dime novels. Such images also belong to the indispensable semantic features of Hollywood Westerns. The Czech screening of the classic Western High Noon, with Garry Cooper, is remembered as another vital impulse for the flourishing of Czech country music. A notable Czech contribution to this film genre was released in 1964—Limonádový Joe aneb koňská opera (Lemonade Joe, or Horse Opera), a parody of many traditional Western films. It poked fun at the genre’s formulas but also, like most parodies, represented a homage of sorts. The film was a love letter to American culture and one of its principal ingredients: the Wild West and its film genre, the Western. Based on the eponymous play by Jiří Brdečka, this musical comedy presented an intentionally polarized, stereotypical medley of characters. Its narrative starts in 1885 in Stetson City, Arizona, when the white-clad, perfectly groomed, and most-lethal gunslinger Lemonade Joe arrives at the Trigger Whiskey Saloon to preach the benefits of drinking Kolaloka Lemonade rather than the local Trigger Whiskey, provided by the saloon’s owner, Doug Badman. The lines of conflict are sharply drawn between the forces of good, Joe, Ezra Goodman, and his attractive blonde daughter Winnifred, who stand for temperance, justice, and traditional family values, and the party of evil represented by Badman, his villainous brother Horace, alias “Hogofogo, the Master Criminal of the Wild West,” and their numerous gunslingers. Somewhere in between, we see the seductive saloon singer Tornado Lou, a black-haired femme fatale who is courted by Badman while at the same time being fatefully attracted to Joe. After a series of humorous scenes and memorable songs, the narrative is resolved as most of the principal characters discover they are, unbeknownst, brothers and sisters. Joe’s exemplary status is destroyed by the revelation that he is merely a traveling salesman for the lemonade company.

24Ironically, this playful parody of Hollywood Westerns morphs in the film’s last moments into a critique of American-style capitalism with its commercialism and ruthless marketing practices. The name of the lemonade—Kolaloka—was not chosen accidentally, either. The message, of course, is that the heroes and the villains are “one family” in the United States. They are all solely motivated by the dollar; in its service, they are ready to overcome their abysmal differences, as shown in the film’s initial scenes. Yet such points rang hollow in the land of the socialist state-planned economy where the most critical skill was less to market one’s surplus consumer goods than to acquire the bare necessities of life. What appealed to the generations of Czech viewers, however, was the myth of the romance of the West that the creators of the comedy creatively engaged with. The film’s success is cited as a significant influence on tramp music, country music, and other cultural practices associated with the mythology of the Wild West of the 1960s and beyond.

5. Pete Seeger’s Tour

25Another crucial impulse for the local country music fans was Pete Seeger’s tour at the beginning of 1964. During four of the nine concerts he gave, the American bard was accompanied by Spirituál Kvintet, one of the most renowned Czech musical formations of the time.

26On the occasion of his Prague concert, local musicians saw a five-string banjo for the first time. Marko Čermák, the banjo player of The Greenhorns, recalls that during his learning years, he tried hard to imitate the sound of Earl Scruggs’ picking style on his homemade banjo. He used U.S. Army radio station broadcasts transmitted weekly from the Munich area for practice material. The only problem was that his banjo had only four strings, so his attempts were doomed to fail despite the long daily hours of effort: one could not see the performers or their instruments on the radio (Čermák in Legendy folku a country [The legends of folk and country music]). As a consequence of Seeger’s visit, “[l]ong into the 1970s, Seeger’s trademark long-neck folk banjo prevailed in Czech country & western and bluegrass music bands” (Přibylová).

27Seeger’s concerts were notable not only because of the instrument he played but also because he expertly handled it and sang, projecting an image of American musical authenticity. As Irena Přibylová points out, “surviving witnesses of Seeger’s concerts speak about revelation and life-long positive impressions.” Yet his rapport with the audience was marred by a political misunderstanding. The regime invited the bard because of his leftist political positions, and the singer expressed some of his political ideas, hoping to find receptive ears. This was, after all, socialist Czechoslovakia, where ordinary people, he believed, had all the power. People had little power to speak of, however, and the fans were not in tune with his political views, for they sounded suspiciously like those of their Communist rulers. And, above all, they were eager to hear him sing and play, rather than speak.

28American filmmaker Gene Deitch, who had lived in Prague since 1959 and knew Seeger personally from his earlier life, described the situation: “Pete thought that at least his anti-war songs would resonate well with the people. That didn’t happen. When Pete sang to them in working-class Ostrava, people booed him! That was a shock to him. He discovered that what was official in the country is automatically unpopular” (qtd. in Přibylová 248). Deitch further clarified the situation elsewhere:

When Pete started playing his protest song against the war in Vietnam, people started whistling in disapproval. Pete might have interpreted the booing as encouragement, but the audience felt he was spreading Czechoslovak government propaganda. When [interpreter] Lulka [Kopecna] told me this, I gently suggested to Pete that he remove the song from his Prague concert set list. (qtd. in Přibylová 248, translation mine)

29Přibylová aptly sums up the importance of Seeger’s visit:

His influence on Czech music and singing was enormous. He taught audiences to sing along with the artist on stage, he taught them several songs in a foreign language in an hour-long concert, inspired those interested in playing the five-string banjo and twelve-string guitar, and showed partially discredited Czech folk music in a different light. His Prague repertoire can be found in the repertoire of Czech folk, blues, country, and bluegrass bands of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s. (260)

6. Festivals

30In the following years, various folk and tramp concerts and festivals sprang up across the country, such as joint concerts of the main bluegrass and folk bands in Prague or the festival Dostavník (Stagecoach) in Sokolov. Established in 1965 and originally known as the Autumn or Spring Stagecoach, this institution transformed Sokolov into a beloved destination for fans of tramp, folk, and country music for many years. The 1966 Festival of Country and Western Music in Prague became the predecessor of a significant milestone in making this style of music an integral part of the Czech musical scene: the 1967 launching of the Porta festival in Ústí nad Labem. Following its success, Porta grew to host thousands of spectators later in the century. In 1982, for instance, a concert was held in Pilsen, where the amphitheater for 2,800 people accommodated as many as 10,000 listeners (“Historie Porty”).

31During the festival’s first run, the participating bands competed in two different disciplines, country and western music, and in tramp choirs. The winners’ names of the first year’s competition show a strong American cultural influence. In the latter category, the top place went to the Mohicans from Prague, and the first three places in the country and western music competition went to the Prague bands The Rangers, The Greenhorns, and The Strings of Tennessee (“Historie Porty”).

7. August 1968 and Beyond

32The invasion of the Red Army and other Eastern Bloc armies in August 1968 represented a stark shift in the political and cultural climate of the country. No area of public activity was to remain unaffected, tramp music and country music included. While some bands suspended their activities for several months, others continued. Soon, however, everyone faced ideological obstacles, particularly the ensembles with English names. They had to alter their names to Czech or not be allowed to play. Similarly, singing in English was prohibited if you wanted to appear in the media. And so, in 1971, the great name-changing of the bands began: The Rangers became Plavci (The Swimmers), The Greenhorns adopted the Czech translation Zelenáči, The Bluegrass Hoppers became Fešáci (The Handsome Ones), and the band Toronto started to call themselves Brontosauři (The Brontosauruses).

33To ensure tighter ideological control of the event, the regime installed the newly reconstructed Union of Socialist Youth as the organizer of the annual Porta festival, and all professional bands that wanted to keep up with their public performances had to go through the demeaning process of getting a government-sanctioned license. These sessions consisted of performances in front of official experts entitled to judge their musical skills. Furthermore, the commission members also asked questions about musical theory and those concerning the musician’s ideological loyalty.

34Unlike the rock scene, whose substantial sections suffered considerably from this demeaning and arbitrary process, the country and bluegrass scene escaped major blows. The early 1970s represented the heyday of many careers. Speaking of the moment of exhaustion and crisis that led to stagnation in Czech rock music following the vibrant, artistically rich period of the 1960s, Lindaur and Konrád offer this explanation:

Economic reasons played a role here, for sure. Domestic rock experienced a significant loss in concert sales. Promoters appeared to shun rock concerts in favor of western bands with guns under their belts. The latter ... gradually took over the radio waves, too, which, given the long tradition of the tramp song in Czech popular music, was not entirely without logic. (54, translation mine)

35In an earlier text, I discussed the spirit of mutual complicity among the musicians and their audiences at the time. The bands changed their names but retained their paraphernalia and Stetsons, vests, jeans, and boots. They could continue singing about their beloved subject—the mythical American West. The more courageous ones, such as Sprituál Kvintet, imbued their concerts with topical political messages. As one listened to selected African American spirituals about freedom and salvation in their Czech rendering, it was hard to miss the parallels (Pospíšil 263). Most of the others offered their audiences solely an imaginary escape from the countless day-to-day miseries and indignities of the normalization of Czechoslovakia.

36Writing about the political standing of country music during the period of normalization, Dickins points out that this musical genre “did not represent the same overt danger to the regime as folk music or the tramping tradition. It was often more anodyne and fatalistic, and it did not pose such searching questions” (Dickins 662). Consequently, country music was allowed to be played on the radio, and ranchers, cowboys, and hoboes became commonplace, just like horses, stagecoaches, wagon trains, and railroads. Many socialist citizens relished hearing about celebrated desperados (as in the song Jesse James) and notable historical events (as in the song “Blízko Little Big Hornu” [Near Little Big Horn]). They sang, and learned, about John Hardy. As a listener, one could fantasize about crossing the plains on a wagon train (as in the song “Přes pláně” [Across the Plains]) or rolling toward New York City on an orange-colored train (as in one of the most famous songs of the Czech country music, “Oranžový expres,” i.e. Johny Cash’s “Orange Blossom Special”). Everything was possible if these travels remained in one’s imagination.

37While bands like Zelenáči (formerly The Greenhorns) and Fešáci ([The Handsome Ones] formerly The Bluegrass Hoppers) retained their style, providing a harmless vent for the unsatisfied desire of the local population to see the world and experience America, others, such as Plavci ([The Swimmers] formerly The Rangers), tried to position their music closer to the mainstream of the day.

38Similarly, the popular band Country Beat Jiřího Brabce, with its star singer Naďa Urbánková, attempted to harmonize their electric country music, accompanied by drums, with the officially sanctioned pop music. They were remarkably successful in their endeavor until the two genres, country music and pop music, which initially stood worlds apart, became practically indistinguishable. Let us compare Country Beat’s 1973 smash hit “Můj Vilém peče Housky” (My William Is Baking Rolls) with the equally legendary 1972 song, Karel Gott’s “Kávu si osladím” (I’ll Sweeten My Coffee).

39Providing some context is advisable here. By the mid-1960s, Karel Gott had established himself as the ultimate local pop star, his career straddling both Czechoslovakia and the German-speaking world. Following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet and allied troops, Karel Gott and his creative team considered emigration. In his book Karel Gott, Československý příběh (Karel Gott, a Czechoslovak Story), Pavel Klusák describes, among many other things, the crucial moments of 1971 when the singer was residing in Germany and negotiating with the authorities about the terms of his possible return to Czechoslovakia. The famous singer was to be allowed to sing both at home and abroad, but would be at the regime’s disposal for propaganda purposes and would refrain from making any political statements during his frequent tours in capitalist countries. When singing at home, he was to create an atmosphere of satisfaction and good feelings. Klusák sums up: “[this arrangement] showed that the subordination to power applies even to the most popular [personages] ... . If you want, believe what you want in private, but outwardly reinforce the impression of a united and contented society” (269).

40And so, the 1972 song “Kávu si osladím” (I’ll Sweeten My Coffee) describes a situation in which the singer is abandoned by his partner. But he does not seem to mind, as the author of both the lyrics and the tune, Ladislav Štaidl, offers the following contented solution to the singer’s sudden solitude: “Kávu si osladím o trochu víc / svý bendžo naladím, a jinak nic. / Oslavím sám Vánoční svátky / a na jaře si vrásky spočítám” (I’ll sweeten my coffee a little more / tune my banjo, and nothing else. /I’ll celebrate / Christmas alone / and count my wrinkles in the spring) (“Kávu si osladím” [I’ll Sweeten My Coffe]).

41Country Beat’s bestselling, award winning song performed by Naďa Urbánková deals, in contrast, with a different problem: her husband William is too busy baking, and there is no time for lovemaking. So, the singer puts a brick on the chimney, and as the oven stops working, William suddenly has time and energy to exercise his marital duties. The song ends with these enthusiastic lines: “Můj Vilém nepek housky a měl mě hodně rád / teď očička má ouzký a dlouho bude spát / Já volám: housky nejsou a pekař musí spát / ať město se hněvá mně to neva jen když mě má rád” (My William didn’t bake buns / and he loved me very much / Now his eyes are narrow / and he will sleep for a long time. / I call: there are no buns / and the baker must sleep / let the city be angry / I don’t care as long as he loves me) (“Můj Vilém peče housky” [My William is Baking Rolls).

42Like many Czech popular songs, this entertaining composition with a Czech text by Zdeněk Svěrák was a cover “that brought success to Lonnie Donegan—the Scottish singer once known as the king of skiffle—in 1960, particularly in the Commonwealth countries” (Schuster). Naďa Urbánková was at the time the queen of Czechoslovak pop music, winning the award for the best female singer in the country Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) from 1972 through 1976.

43Both songs are symptomatic of the atmosphere of their day. Trivial in their topics, they celebrate the retreat into one’s private sphere as the ultimate solution to any problems life may bring. In the heyday of country music in Czechoslovakia, Karel Gott significantly tunes his banjo, while adding some more sugar to his coffee. Such are the modest but beautiful pleasures of socialist life, we are told. Similarly, the heroine of the other song savors the carnal joys of her marriage, regardless of the needs of the wider community. Again, an attitude well in tune with the prevailing positions of the day where retreat into one’s private sphere of sex, family, hobbies, and modest consumerism was the necessary, and even desirable, norm. These songs, like one of the last hits of The Beatles, communicated to their audiences that in the new realities of the 1970s, it was simply wise to “let it be.” (Notably, neither song was sung during the 2019 musical birthday party. The gathered singers would certainly remember both songs, but unlike country music, their connotations would probably not be as pleasant, even when sung with a dose of irony.)

44Whatever their respective musical solutions to the disappointments brought about by the political changes, the musicians offered their listeners imaginary solutions of how to salvage some happiness in the otherwise bleak world of normalization in Czechoslovakia. From among the various available choices, tramp and country songs about dew on the tracks, Custer’s last stand, Jesse James, and even John Hardy seemed like the best possible bargain. And while passionately singing around bonfires across the country, during trips or parties, the fans were largely unaware of the nature of the deal struck between the performers and the regime: the bands supplied the fantasy of America, its rugged landscapes, the lives of desperados, cowboys, and hoboes, who are always on the roads. In return, the Communist rulers would let them sing.

45And what about the tramps at the time? They were happily ignoring such developments. As always, throughout most of the 20th century, they wore their Czechoslovak army boots, hallmark camouflage attire, and U.S. Army knapsacks, heading toward the forest. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, one could see their enormous crowds every Friday in the larger cities, clad in green, as they escaped the urban greyness of normalized Czechoslovakia. Equipped with flasks, blankets, and their indispensable banjos and guitars, they headed toward nature, which in their imaginations looked like America.

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Notes

1 For an in-depth examination of the phenomenon, in connection with tramping, see Paulina Brenn´s article “Weekend Getaways: The Chata, the Tramp and the Politics of Private Life in Post-1968 Czechoslovakia.”

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References

Electronic reference

Tomáš Pospíšil, Dreaming about the American West: Tramping and Country Music in Communist CzechoslovakiaEuropean journal of American studies [Online], 20-3 | 2025, Online since 01 December 2025, connection on 24 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/25050; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15dmi

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About the author

Tomáš Pospíšil

Tomáš Pospíšil is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno. He teaches courses in American literature, American and Canadian film, and American cultural studies. His current research focuses on African American film representation, Canadian feature cinema, and the reception of American culture in the Czech lands.

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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