I thought i might introduce some Czech music that would be suitable to listening to the language, something nice and clear and quiet, my attention to to this goal has been distracted by a series of associations though, so the result is closer to a small collection of some of my favourites.
Mňága a Žďorp plays pleasant smooth rock, „happy songs about sad things“ as they put it. Melodic music and pessimistic lyrics about how life is grey and dull, sung in rather monotonous uninterested voice.
Folk musicians/singer-songwriters tend to sing clearly, so I thought of
Karel Plíhal with his soothing guitar and playful sung poems;
Jaroslav Hutka – he writes his own deeply philosophical songs, but I always liked him singing traditional folk stuff better for I usually didn’t get the point of the lyrics he wrote; and
Sestry Steinovy , two girls playing guitars and singing in their charachteristic cheerful way. Relaxing.
Another two girls came to mind, this time playing cellos,
Tara Fuki. They usually sing in Polish though, so I wouldn’t recommend it for learning Czech. Otherwise strongly recommended.
And as we’re still among females,
Radůza plays an original mixture of anything she met on her journeys, using accordion mostly.
Another accordionist with passionate way of expression, lyrics with humanistic message and cute sense of humour,
Vašek Koubek. Try number 5 – Sedni a jen se dívej – there could be hardly anything more optimistic in the world.
Here, in song number 4 - Hospoda – there's Traband playing along.
Traband, a group that broke up two years or so ago, but recently they started anew, that means with completely new repertoir and approach to music. I like their older things, inspired by Balkans brass music, gipsy music, klezmer and old Prague street songs, more. This song belongs to the old ones.
A bit of alternative rock,
Ty Syčáci and
Už jsme doma. Oh
this song of the latter is cute, too. Big show.
Funny that I can never say anything about music I love the most.
To finish on a classical note, here’s some classical rock,
Hudba Praha and classical underground,
Psí vojáci.
Are you a Czech, or do you have any relatives/close friends in the Czech Republic? I thought Nohavica's songs were very Czech (I mean, not easily understandable by a non-native speaker or someone without the cultural background).
well maybe I did, but I don't know them by name...