A brief (musical) history of Slovakia

IN COMMUNIST Czechoslovakia, music was one of the great escapes. Not even the ubiquitous secret police could disrupt the world of sound.

In the aftermath of the Soviet-led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, listening to Plastic People of the Universe (PPU)a Czechoslovak rock band inspired by the musical experiments of the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappawas tantamount to political rebellion.

PPU are well known in the West, thanks in part to a recent Tom Stoppard play. But they represented just the tip of a subversive iceberg. In the repressive 1970s, acts like Karel Kryl and Marta Kubiov, as well as PPU, helped popularise Charter 77, the human-rights manifesto that fomented dissidence in the occupied country. Such artists were often forced into menial work and harassed by the secret police. When Ms Kubiov sang her banned protest song A Prayer for Marta to tearful demonstrators in Prague in 1989, it was a death-knell for communism.

Twenty years on the tradition remains alive, but in slightly different form. Czechs and Slovaks parted ways in 1993, and today the Czechs tend to be the activists. Ahead of last year's general election, some of the countrys best-known cultural figures backed a non-party movement called Vymte Politiky ("Replace the Politicians") that advocated a wholesale clean-out of the corrupt political scene.

Slovaks tend to be a more restrained bunch. But there was a powerful moment of upheaval in 1998. In the run-up to a general election, support from well-known cultural figuresespecially popular comedianshelped the democratic opposition topple the semi-authoritarian prime minister Vladimir Meiar, whose abuses of power threatened to derail Slovakias European integration.

Now the next generation has spoken out. A recently released rap album, Rezimy (Regimes), co-sponsored by the Open Society Foundation, takes listeners on a ten-song journey through the various regimes that Slovakia has seen in the last 30 years (you can hear the album below). In little over half an hour the album covers communism, socialism, the revolution, the short-lived Czechoslovak federation, meciarism and freedom.

Rezimy is not an album of metaphor. Instead, it paints realistic pictures of the everyday gloom under communism, the dangers latent in a young capitalism system and the tantalising tang of possibility that followed accession to the European Union in 2004.

The main lyric-writer is Michal Kov, who shares his name not only with the first Slovak president but also his son, who was, infamously, abducted by the secret services in 1995, at the height of the Meiar era. His name is not a pseudonym, Mr Kov (the songwriter) says, though it certainly strikes a conveniently ironic note. One song refers to Ivan Lexa, who as chief of the Slovak secret service was accused of organising the kidnapping of the presidents son.

The album's musical arrangements go beyond the formulaic simplicity of most Slovak hip-hop, injecting elements of funk and new jazz stylings. The band also makes use of samples of contemporary recordings, such as those taken at the demonstrations in November 1989.

Yet it is the lyrics that shine through. Not always wholly immune from clich, there is nevertheless a pungency to their honesty. In the communist era, mad dogs on borders sniffed blood, knowing they could bite. Jednota [a food shop] only had rice and lunchmeat in cans . Yet here is a note of East Germany-style Ostalgie: Some miss the god-like [singer] Karel Gott and the pioneers oath.

Then comes a vision of post-communist Slovakia, with its full shelves, jams in public transport, jobless men in black in the streets, knives in ribs, ecstasy, crystal meth and vacations in Bibione.

But the band reserves particular ire for the Meiar era, when sometimes a minister was fired, sometimes a shot. Rezimy also takes a poke at the new face of freedom after Mr Meiars ouster in 1998, mentioning the power of investment funds and dropping digs at a controversial former Supreme Court president.

On Tuesday I attended the launch of the album, a low-budget spectacle in a Bratislava club. Archive shots of the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution featured. There was no champagne. A CD case was symbolically scratched with a piece of barbed wire that once separated Czechoslovakia from Austria at the Bratislava castle of Devin.

Mr Kov says, I didnt live in the era of PPU or Karel Kryl. I live now, and I comment on what I live in. It may be depressing at times, but it is not a tragic memento. It is a part of history that I wanted to picture, so that people wouldnt forget.

Rezimy by Rezimy


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