“Sunny Grave” and “Odyssey”: Restrictions and the Creative Process in Socialist Czechoslovakia Using the Cases of the Blue Effect and Atlantis Bands

• Authors: Poděbradský Oldřich

Title variants

CS

„Slunečný hrob“ a „Odyssea“: restrikce a kreativní proces v socialistickém Československu na případech skupin Blue Effect a Atlantis

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article focuses on the state-forced changes in the musical creative process in 1960s communist Czechoslovakia. Using historical sources and narrative interviews with famous musicians of that time (Karel Kahovec, Viktor Sodoma, Josef Laufer…), it examines how musicians perceived the effects of state repression e.g. having to translate English lyrics into Czech, being persecuted for playing a specific musical genre, and being banned from the media due to inappropriate themes or topics used on their records. These repressions are evidenced in two example cases: the song “Slunečný hrob” [Sunny Grave] by the Blue Effect band, which became famous in the Czech movie Pelíšky only in the late 1990s, and the unjustly forgotten album Odyssea [Odyssey] recorded by Atlantis, a Petr Ulrych’s music band, in 1969. The article shows how the perception of music and lyrics by the state’s repressive apparatus changed over a short period of time and how artists negotiated with the regime according to the changing circumstances

Keywords

EN

Rock’n’roll; political restrictions on culture; communist cultural policy; Czechoslovakia

• Publisher: The National Institute of Folk Culture
• Journal: Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 177 - 186

Contributors

author

Poděbradský Oldřich