The oldest known recordings of the banjo date from the 1890s and are contained in four wax cylinders recorded by the African American entertainer Charles A. Asbury.
The Retropod podcast is the latest to write about Asbury, following several articles last year when .Archeophone Records released a 45 rpm vinyl recording with 16-page booklet, photos, and notes.
Lubos Malina plays banjo with the Czech Band Druha Trava, at Dobrofest, Trnava, Slovakia, 2006
The Archeophone notes describe Asbury as "an African American veteran of the minstrel stage" who lived from ca. 1857 to 1903.
Born in Florida but raised in Georgia by a Baptist preacher, Asbury played Sambo in stage productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
before becoming a noted vocalist with the original Unique Quartette and
a celebrated banjoist on the vaudeville stage. His banjo songs were
popular in phonograph arcades all over the country in the early 1890s,
years before phonographs went into people’s homes. He did yeoman work
for the infant phonograph companies–churning out wax cylinders, a few at
a time, for seven years–before disappearing abruptly from the annals of
the stage and recording history[...].
The oldest recording on the set dates to about 1891, making it the
oldest known banjo recording in private hands. Asbury played in the old
minstrel “stroke” banjo style that virtually disappeared from the
vernacular and has only in recent years been rediscovered and
reinvigorated by scholars of American banjo music.
In Brno, Czech Republic, the Imaginary Wild West leaps off a wall….
advertising “the best steaks” in the city at an eatery called “U Starýho Bill” (At Old Bill’s) that calls itself “a real ‘TEXAS’ restaurant.”
The wall here was a few steps away from the Sono Center, a major Brno
venue for contemporary music — where I was headed to attend a concert
by the Czech bluegrass band The Malina Brothers, with guest appearances by Charlie McCoy,
the Nashville-based harmonica virtuoso and member of the Country Music
Hall of Fame, and the Czech singer Kat’a Garcia. The concert was sold
out, and got a prolonged standing ovation from the crowd. And it was
being filmed for a live show DVD.
The Malinas are old friends of mine. Banjo player and
multi-instrumentalist Lubos Malina was one of the founding members of
the great Czechgrass group Druha Trava, and I met him (amazingly) nearly
15 years ago, at one of the many summer bluegrass/country festivals in
CZ, when I first started exploring the Imaginary Wild West in Europe.
Guitarist Pavel Malina used to play with DT, and fiddler Pepa Malina
still sometimes plays with them. The Malina Brothers band came together
informally at first, but over the past five years or so has developed a
remarkable following in CZ — as the concert in Brno demonstrated.
The three brothers visited in Italy six years ago and gave a house
concert at the home of a friend. It was the first of a series of house
concerts anchored by Lubos.
The brothers played this arrangement of Smetana at the house concert in
2013 — and at the concert in Brno.
On the night after the Brno concert, Pepa Malina performed with Druha
Trava at the start of a a week-long tour with Charlie McCoy — a
sold-out, standing-ovation gig in the town of Ceska Trebova.
Here’s a video of the run-through before the Ceska Trebova concert:
Charlie McCoy has had a standout career in the USA and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
I’ve written about him in the past, on my Sauerkraut Cowboys blog,
because he is quite wellknown in the country music scene outside the
USA. He tours regularly in Europe and elsewhere (i.e. Japan), and he
makes a point to play with European bands and also records with them; he
has released albums in France, Denmark, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Later this summer he will be touring in Sweden in England.
Onstage at the concert in Ceska Trebova, he recalled how he met up
with Druha Trava — it was at the festival in Strakonice, CZ, where he
was performing in 2001. DT was also on the bill and asked if he would
join them for a few songs — since then he has toured with them half a
dozen or more times in CZ, released a live album with DT and also
released a CD with The Malina Brothers.
Here’s a promo video about the Malina Brothers album (partly in Czech, partly in English):
I met Charlie back in 2005 during one of his tours with Druha Trava — the concert I saw was at a “Days of Texas” festival in the little town of Roznov pod Radnostem, in eastern CZ.
The festival, I wrote in an article
highlighted
the fact that from the mid-19th century until World War I, thousands of
people emigrated from Roznov and other towns and villages in the region
to Texas. Today, Texas has the largest ethnic Czech community of any
state in the United States.
There were
demonstrations of 19th-century farming customs used by the emigrants and
performances by American-style Czech country-western groups, as well as
local folk groups performing Wallachian songs and dances. An exhibition
of quilting featured a big patchwork quilt reading “Texas,” hung
prominently from the upper floor of the old Roznov Town Hall.
Like the Malina Brothers concert in Brno, the Druha Trava/Charlie
McCoy concert in Ceska Trebova drew a standing ovation from an energized
crowd — and lots of autograph-seekers and CD-buyers afterward.
The American banjo great Tony Trischka has come out with a gorgeous new CD, "A Great Big World." You can hear a preview of one track by clicking the link on the photo above.
The CD showcases Tony't thrilling virtuosity -- and includes guests such as Andy Statman, Russ Barenberg, Tristan Clarridge, Mike Barnett and others on a variety of songs -- including one of my favorites, Woody Guthrie's "Do-Re-Mi." All the tracks are winners -- but the one that really hit me was the oddly titled "Purple Trees of Colorado."Amazing.
"Everyone loves to play with Tony, because of his strong musical gifts and conception, and because he's one of the coolest dudes to hang around with and be yourself. Not everyone who asks you to play on their record actually wants that, but he does."
Though I've seen him in the U.S., I know Tony from here in Europe -- where he plays often, and where he has had considerable influence. This has been particularly so in the Czech Republic, where his progressive bluegrass style was a powerful inspiration to (among others) the musicians who went on to found the group Druha Trava.
In the 1980s, DT's singer-songwriter Robert Krestan and banjoist Lubos Malina were members of the pioneering Czech progressive bluegrass group Poutnici. (They left Poutnici and formed DT in 1991.) Robert at that time also played banjo. Tony was one of their heroes.
As I noted in an earlier post, Tony first toured the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in 1988, before the fall of communism, and he also returned in 1989, also before the Wall came down. During those stays, he performed as a guest on an LP by Poutnici, called "Wayfaring Stranger." In the liner notes, he describes Poutnici in much the same terms I have used to describe Druha Trava. "They … have a unique sound," he said. "Czechgrass instead of Kentucky bluegrass. In other words, they've made it their own, which is wonderful."
In addition to his Czech tours, Tony also plays elsewhere in Europe -- he teaches at a summer bluegrass workshop near Urbino, Italy, and this fall will be teaching at a "banjo camp" workshop in Germany.
I can't resist posting this rather fantastically bizarre video from 1983 of the seminal Czech progressive bluegrass band Poutnici....oh, that communist-era sense of humor!
The video shows several members of current Poutnice line-up and also Robert Krestan (heavily bearded on banjo) who went on to found Druha Trava in 1991.
Pavel Bobek at the gala Prague concert in 2012 celebrating his 75th birthday
By Ruth Ellen Gruber
Sad news in the Czech music world....the singing legend Pavel Bobek died in Prague today (Nov. 20). He was 76, and had been in declining health for some time.
I got to know his music -- and him, a little -- in recent years as he performed frequently with Druha Trava and with Lubos Malina, who also produced Bobek's last CDs. Last year, he was inducted into the Czech popular music award "Andel"'s hall of fame.
Bobek got his start in the late 50s/early 60s as the Communist era's "Mister Rock and Roll," and also became a star in the Czech country scene. He had big hits with covers of American songs by Kris Kristofferson, Jon Denver, Bruce Springsteen and more -- like this Buddy Holly cover, very early on.
Another early clip -- a Czech version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down"
And here he sings another of his big hits -- a Czech version of Springsteen's "My Home Town." The video sets it against the bleakness of a Czech Communist-era "panel house" apartment complex...
Bobek's duet with DT's Robert Krestan of "Jeste Neni Tma," Robert's Czech version of Bob Dylan's "It's Not Dark Yet" from the 2007 Dylanovky CD, is one of my favorites. Here they are, performing it in 2010 during a concert in Prague.
As I wrote at the time, the concert was very poignant, as his health problems were evident even then, three years ago -- but the packed audience gave him thunderous applause.
Last year, I attended a gala concert marking his 75th birthday. Again, it was a very poignant, very moving experience, as he appeared very frail onstage. Again, he performed for a full, enthusiastic audience.
Another Czech singing legend, Karel Gott, joined Bobek on stage at the birthday concert.
I have to close with Bobek's Czech version of "Country Roads"....
Czech Radio’s English language service recently interview me, along with banjoist-multi-instrumentalist Lubos Malina, about the great “Czechgrass” band Druha Trava’s new double live CD.
We talk about the new CD set — one CD was recorded during the annual summer festival in the beautiful town of Telc, and the other is a compilation of performances last year with guests Peter Rowan, Charlie McCoy and Katia Garcia.
We also spoke about my role in DT’s previous CD, Shuttle to Bethlehem, which mainly features my English language translations of DT singer-songwriter-frontman Robert Krestan’s songs. (I've written about that experience on this blog).
After the interview, Lubos and I stopped to visit the new museum devoted to pioneering Czech animator Karel Zeman, and then went on to a concert by Kris Kristofferson.
Last summer, when I went into the studio in Prague to help with the recording of Druha Trava's CD Shuttle to Bethlehem, I ended up hanging out and traveling a bit with Lee Bidgood, an American fiddler and mandolinist who teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange.
Lee did his PhD on Czech Bluegrass (we met in 2004 at the Caslav Bluegrass Festival in CZ) and he and Shara are making a documentary film on Czech Bluegrass music and musicians -- I am thrilled to be onboard as a sort of consultant or production assistant....
The film now has a web site -- you can click HERE to find out information, see some video, hear some music and find out more about the project, screenings, events, etc.
One upcoming event is a concert August 8, in Johnson City, TN, at which Lee and fellow musicians will perform Czech translations of bluegrass classics as well as original material by Czech bluegrass musicians, in both Czech and English.
Here's a clip I took of Lee jamming late a night with Lubos Malina, of Druha Trava.
During out brief travels last summer, we also visited Marko Cermak, the godfather of five-string banjo playing in CZ, at his cabin in the woods.
Interviewing Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
According to his own and other accounts, Cermak, who was active in the Czech tramp music scene, built his own long-necked, five-string banjo by studying photographs taken of Pete Seeger at Seeger's seminal 1964 concert in Prague concert. Cermak went on to become one of Czechoslovakia's first banjo virtuosi.
Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
Among other things, Cermak founded one of Czechoslovakia's first American-style country and bluegrass groups, the Greenhorns. The Greenhorns became extremely influential by playing Czech language versions of American folk songs, copying arrangements they heard on American Forces Radio. In doing so, they, and similar groups, brought these songs firmly into the local musical tradition, fostering a total assimilation of many songs into the Czech repertoire.
After visiting Marko, we went on to spend the night at the home of banjoist and banjo-maker Zdenek Roh, near Jihlava, where I had visited the previous year with Lubos Malina and Robert Krestan of Druha Trava.
Michael Lonstar and Dorota Krawczyk at the Peter Dula tribute. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
By Ruth Ellen Gruber
This week I was in Kosice, in far eastern tip of Slovakia, to attend the annual concert and awards event held there to honor the memory of local son Peter Dula, a Slovak country singer who died of cancer in 2009 at the age of only 28. He had been diagnosed ten years earlier while in the U.S. playing hockey for a junior league in Boston, then got into country music while undergoing cancer treatment back in Slovakia.
I never met Dula (though we were friends on Facebook), but he was a friend of several of my friends in the central European country scene. Dula had fronted the band Veslari -- "The Rowers," Slovakia's oldest country music band, since 2004. With Dula singing, the band won a Slovak Grammy and other numerous awards including the best European country band of 2007. They also played at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 2007.
After his death, Dula's friends in the country music scene over here decided to honor his memory by each year passing on his guitar to a chosen artist, who would be its custodian for the following 12-month period, creating a sort of "Wayfaring Guitar" as a living memorial.
The guitar is handed over at a concert event where awards are also handed out, inducting chosen artists into "Peter Dula's Country Music Hall of Fame."
This year the awards went to my Czech friends Robert Krestan and Lubos Malina, and their band Druha Trava -- I worked with the band on their latest CD, Shuttle to Bethlehem, which features Robert's original songs sung in my English translations.
The concert -- which lasted four hours -- was held in a big theater-type hall in some sort of anonymous facility (a driving school?) on the southern edge of Kosice. The theater was packed, and the atmosphere was good: not raucous, like a German or Polish country crowd; not "tramp" like the Czech bluegrass crowd can be. There was no bar in the place -- so no one was drunk, either! And the only person in a real cowboy hat was Lonstar. (Several of us wore cowboy boots, though....)
Lonstar, a young Polish singer named Dorota Krawczyk, and a Slovak band led by local singer Laco Sasak performed during the first half of the show. A mix of U.S. songs, and traditional-style originals (sung in English, Polish and Slovak) -- concluding the set with a Slovak version of the song "Cowboy's Gone," which Lonstar wrote in memory of Peter Dula. All the while, pictures of Dula were projected onto the rear of the stage.
Druha Trava was the headline act and played the second half of the show. I've seen them perform a lot, but I've never seen such an enthusiastic audience -- whooping and stomping and cheering, etc. Pretty wild. DT hadn't performed in Kosice in years, and it was as if the audience was just hungry for the music.
At the end of the show, the awards (framed citations) were present, and Peter Dula's wayfaring guitar was handed over into the care of DT.
Then, as the closer, Robert, joined by the other artists, sang the folksong "Wayfaring Stranger", with Dula's picture as a backdrop, which seemed the right way to end the show.
More DT and Shuttle to Bethlehem -- the band's English-language CD that mainly features my translations of Robert Krestan's original Czech songs.
A story on the band and the CD, by NPR political correspondent Don Gonyea, ran on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" show today. Read a short version of it HERE or listen to the full story HERE.
The first time I heard Druha Trava play was April 2009. I was covering President Obama's trip to the Europe. There was a big outdoor speech in Prague, and the band was playing Czech versions of Bob Dylan songs.
I did a short radio postcard story back then, figuring it was the kind of experience that every music fan knows: You stumble upon a great band somewhere and never see them again.
Now it's the fall of 2011, and I'm chasing candidates around Iowa. Who should be doing a show at the Czech and Slovak Hall in Cedar Rapids? Druha Trava.
I just spent three days with Druha Trava in California (around the Bay Area) helping out with some of the PR for the new CD "Shuttle to Bethlehem" -- the CD showcases my English language translations of Robert Krestan's original Czech songs, and I also wrote the liner notes for the album.
It was fun. Three good and very well received concerts in three quite different venues as part of the band's current five-week U.S. tour (a sold-out gig at a coffee house in Santa Clara, a crowded concert in someone's house in Redwood City, and a lunchtime show at a Mexican Restaurant called Don Quixote's near Santa Cruz....see clip below
I also took part in a two-hour radio show on the local KRCB NPR affiliate in Sonoma country about the CD and the band, hosted by my friend Linda Seabright -- and ahead of the Don Quixote gig, I spoke on-air between songs during a live performance by the band on KPIG FM. (The studio is located in a former motel in Freedom, CA, and is decorated with layers of pictures and posters testifying to 40 years of rock...)
KPIG studio. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
The band's tour has been getting good write-ups: to me it's interesting how the sets they sing are different in the States from what they do in CZ. Here in the US, most is in English -- new songs from "Shuttle" and a range of covers -- and there's more bluegrass. But in CZ, Robert's songs make up the major part of the onstage repertoire, with only a very few songs in English.
Shuttle to Bethlehem, the new English-language CD by the Czech band Druha Trava, is officially out now in the Czech Republic -- and the band is in the US at the start of a five-week tour to launch it. I take particular interest because I was involved with the CD production -- I translated Robert Krestan's songs and also helped out in the studio during recording. You can find the English lyrics HERE.
I'm eager to see how the CD is received -- so far, comments are very positive. One newspaper editor I know in Minneapolis called it on Facebook "a great album, and a wonderful introduction to the renowned "Czechgrass" band."
In mid-July I spent two days in a Prague studio helping record the vocal tracks for a new CD by the Czech country/bluegrass/fusion group Druha Trava. Founded 20 years ago, in 1991, DT and its various members have brought out more than a score of albums, including several in English -- see a history of the group by Lilly Pavlak, posted on the European Bluegrass Blog by clicking HERE
But the new Druha Trava CD -- tentatively titled "Shuttle to Bethlehem" after one of the songs (the inspiration was Bethlehem PA, not the "other" one) is the first that will primarily feature English-language versions of singer-songwriter Robert Krestan’s distinctive original songs.
I made the translations, and the studio session was the culmination of a collaborative project that had taken more than five years to come to fruition.
During the recording session, we were joined in the studio by Lee Bidgood -- a wonderful musician who did his PhD on Czech bluegrass and now teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange, who are making a documentary on Czech bluegrass. They filmed the session and also interviewed Robert, banjoist Lubos Malina and me.
Lee and me when we met in 2004
Lee is one of the first people I got to know what I was starting to follow the Czech bluegrass scene -- we met at the Caslav bluegrass festival in 2004 and I recall how wonderful it was to talk to someone who also was looking at the scene and the music from the "outside" and considering the same questions that I was.
While he was doing research in CZ a few years ago, Lee kept a wonderful blog in which he described music and musicians and reflected on the history and trajectory of the music in the Czech Republic. He hasn't posted anything lately, but it is a terrific resource.
I wrote about the Prague recording session this week in a post on the Arty Semite blog of the Forward, describing a bit of the complex process of translation. I started translating Krestan's songs into English in 2006 and continued working on them as one facet of the "Sauerkraut Cowboys/Indian Dreams" project for which I had a Guggenheim Fellowship and NEH summer grant.
My first goal was basic: I loved the Czech originals, but I wanted to know what they meant. As I started working, though, it seemed much more logical — and in fact, even easier — to put them in a rhyming form that could be sung. The process was surprisingly straightforward.
A young student in Prague, David Kraus, supplied me with word-for-word equivalents. David’s father Tomas is an old friend, the secretary of the Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, but he also knows a lot about the Czech country music scene. In Communist times Tomas’s late brother [Ronald Kraus] produced, wrote and translated songs for several key Czech tramp and country-style groups [including the iconic band KTO]..
I took the words that David gave me, compared them to the rhythm of the original Czech lyrics, and listened over and over to the original songs in order to capture their meaning and rhyme structure as well as to fit them to the melodies.
Czech is a more bristly language than English, with quite different sounds and cadences, and Krestan uses words for their tonality as well as meaning. But remarkably, my lyrics got to a point where they seemed to click into place. Later, Krestan and I spent a couple of sessions together tweaking the English to improve both nuance and “singability.”
In the studio, as Krestan sang into the microphone, I stood in the sound booth with DT’s banjo player Lubos Malina, who is co-producing the CD with Nashville-based Steve Walsh. Five years on, it was the first time I heard the songs sung in their final form. (Walsh oversaw the recording of the instrumentals in Nashville last spring.) They sounded, well, right. I focused on recording levels and intonation, but I couldn’t keep a goofy smile off my face.
Here's a brief video clip I took of one of the recording session takes of the song "Before We Say Good-Bye".
And here's the original Czech version, sung by the band performing outside Prague castle in 2009, when President Obama was there meeting with Czech leaders.
For the past couple of days I have been in the rural Czech Republic, helping the Czech singer songwriter Robert Krestan of the Czechgrass group Druha Trava rehearse the English language versions of some of his songs for a new, all English language CD -- today we go in to the studio in Prague to begin cutting the tracks. I've never been in a studio for a recording, so it should be an interesting experience..... I did the translations of the songs, and I have to say, they sound good!
Here are the lyrics for the ones that will be on the CD:
Tanecnice (Dancer)
An upturned chair shows the hour has passed In a night club at the end of care. The one last dancer in the corner stands Brushing glitter from her long dark hair.
I'm the last guest, the last glass in my hand; I'm the last one in this place. I push back my hat and I look at her, How she fools the world, with all her paint
Refrain: Josephina, dance for me, dance the dawning sky For this undrunk, unfinished night Ah, dance for me good-bye
She takes her bag, my ballerina; Just a key and a bottle of beer. She straightens the chairs and kills the light, She smiles as she gets out of here.
I open the door, it's early dawn It leads me down the path outside Where heaven's morning stars await The one who has refused to hide.
The north wind’s casting its magic spells On my beachhead by the sea When all at once my heart reveals A naked fantasy
Somewhere in my dream a dancer whirls Too daring maybe for my soul I set sail toward the open waves Just call me Ishmael
Refrain: Josephina, dance for me, dance the dawning sky For this undrunk, unfinished night Ah, dance for me good-bye
Infiela
Infiela, Feathers in your touch Dying, by your side A hundred times, as much. A tyrant takes my soul I'm locked in God's embrace The Devil calls my name Eternal sacrifice
Morning, I set sail From the waters of Cartegena From the infernal gates of Hell Grateful, at peace, I come Morning, I sail away In darkness diminished to dawn Oh, beautiful, faithless one, Infiela!
Infiela, Weren't we maybe so Lost in our own world Countless times and more? Pure in innocence Damned in our desire Gods in nakedness Human in envy's fire?
Morning, I set sail From the waters of Cartegena From the infernal gates of Hell Grateful, at peace, I come. Morning, I sail away In darkness diminished to dawn Oh, beautiful, faithless one, Infiela!
Shuttle to Bethlehem (Pendl do Betlema)
I hear nothing, just a barking and a seagull's cry. Bells are wailing, friars humming, and the crows whiz by The whistle's sizzling, even kissing you sounds like a slap Dies irae, and all around the shrieks of pelicans.
Refrain:
But before I disappear, my dumb love, Let me hitchhike for you while I can. Today I'm gone, on the shuttle train to Bethl'em, Maybe soon, a taxi to the promised land.
Your eyes tell me, you got everything you ever asked. You're driven crazy, by my fear, my nakedness. My heart is bleeding, the priest slashes with a knife of stone; Just like you, dear, just like you and you and you alone.
Refrain
But before I disappear, my dumb love, Let me hitchhike for you while I can. Today I'm gone, on the shuttle train to Bethl'em, Maybe soon, a taxi to the promised land.
When I Take Off My Shoes (Az si jednou sund�m boty)
When you tell me to stop And then when I take my shoes off When the smile of the rails Tells me jump, now, my friend
When my hand becomes hard As a tile of terracotta When I sit by my door Just don't ask to what end.
When the dust from my roads Cleans the scars upon my forehead When I learn about things That are best not to know
When the last of my rhymes Become idle in my song book It may well be too late, The last time, maybe so.
Then when the wind and the rain Wash the traces from Golgotha When the smoke from the pyres In the end fades away
When I take off my belt And then when I take my shoes off Nothing's left for me, now And for you, now, who's to say.
When Death Does Us Apart (Az Nas Smrt Rozdeli)
When horses fly away To the night, to the gates Of Jericho When our embrace dissolves in the fog, on the shore When those lips of yours are double-locked As if I tried to kiss the Gates of Troy I'm just an outcast soul without a name Undrunk, unloved, unfull of joy.
When shots of firearms quiet down on the streets down by the bay When death does us apart along its blue waterway; When the reek of booze clears this nest of doves And the fortune teller does the same It’s the end of song, end of love End of war, end of game.
The Last of the Galleons (Za Posledni Lodi)
The last of the galleons had sunk into the sea The last of the soldiers had heard his death knell And a desolate chant from within a stone cloister Was like one of us bidding farewell
The last of the galleons had sunk into the sea And like night-flying bats the wind ruffled the shore And a brave young musician chimed chords on an organ, Jeremiah's his name evermore
The last ship had sunk, and I rushed to a place Where the turning flood tide left me armor from Spain, A sack of pesetas, some yellowing letters; Stark memories and, unfathomed pain
My friends, the Czech bluegrass/fusion/rock "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava are recording a new album in Nashville -- and are maintaining a very interesting and revealing blog that reflects on and describes the process of crafting songs (the Czech translates pretty well in google translate).
There are pictures and some fascinating video showing how the songs come together. (It's not as dramatic as Godard's film One Plus One, one of whose running themes was the Rolling Stones working on Sympathy for the Devil....)
There's gold in them thar hills! The discovery of gold by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in what is today California, on January 24, 1848 sparked the extraordinary migration of as many as 300,000 people who "rushed" to the region by land and sea to seek their fortune in search of the yellow metal.
The Gold Rush and fabled Mother Lode captured the world's collective imagination, inspiring songs and stories, literature and tall tales, as well as attracting fortune-seekers from all directions. Boom towns grew up, and prospectors and gold-panners became Wild West archetypes, part and parcel of the set of Frontier characters that ranged from Native Americans in feathered headdress to cowboys, trappers, schoolmarms and whores. Indeed, gold-panning ponds are de rigeur features of some of the Wild West theme parks in Europe, and there are gold-panner hobbyist/reenactor groups. One of these hobbyists taught me to pan for gold when I visited Beaver City, a private wild west town in the Czech Republic.
I learn to pan for gold in Beaver City
Last week, I spent a day in the "real" Gold Rush country, partaking in a mash-up of experiences that blended today's realities with the romance of the Imaginary West.
I visited Sutter's Mill itself, where a nicely laid out museum park tells the Gold Rush story through monuments, mock-ups of old buildings (reminiscent of stage-sets, theme-parks or European skansen open air museums) and preserved original sites. From the top of a hill, a monument to Sutter surveys the scene.
Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
The park includes two fascinating pioneer cemeteries, one Protestant and one Catholic, whose tombstones and epitaphs told the story of European fortune-seekers who ended up in this corner of California. (I also visited the tiny Jewish cemetery in Placerville - I posted about this on my Jewish Heritage blog.)
What was particular interesting at the cemeteries was to see the stones on which was inscribed as part of the epitaph the origin of the deceased: "A Native of Germany," "A Native of Ireland," etc etc: all drawn, one way or another, by the lure of gold.
Catholic cemetery. photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
Protestant cemetery. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
I stayed (natch) at the Mother Lode Motel in Placerville, a tourist town in the heart of the region, where Wild West kitsch similar to that found in Europe is on sale.
Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
There is a historic 19th century hotel in town, the Cary House.
Cary House. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
But the Mother Lode was more my price range -- and it had free WiFi, too.
Mother Lode Motel, Placerville. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
What brought me to the Gold Rush territory also formed part of the real imaginary mash-up -- my friends, the Czech bluegrass/country/acoustic rock band Druha Trava, were giving a concert in Placerville on Oct. 6. (I toted my newly purchased ukulele to the gig -- I don't know how to play yet, though -- and wore, of course, my cowboy boots....)
Last night in Prague I attended the launch concert for the new CD by the Czech singing legend Pavel Bobek. The CD is Czech language covers of Johnny Cash songs and much of it was recorded in Nashville. This sparked the main Czech TV news to feature it on its broadcast on Sunday.
I found the concert poignant: the passage of time and all that. Bobek, who is in his 70s, had a bout of bad health in recent years. He got his start in the late 50s/early 60s as "Mister Rock and Roll." I watched videos of his youthful performances before going to see him live....
Backed by the Malinaband (mainly members of Druha Trava), Bobek performed some of his big hits -- covers of Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Springsteen songs, and also the perennial fave "Country Roads".
He encored with the duet "Jeste neni tma" from DT's Dylanovky CD, with Robert Krestan -- a Czech cover of Bob Dyland's "It's not dark yet"
The hall, at a local culture center, was packed with fans of all ages, and they cheered and whooped -- giving him a standing ovation.
Thanks to the tenacity of Greg Buhr working from Minnesota Senator Al Franken's office, I just received word a few minutes ago that Druha Trava's visa petition has been approved! Greg left a message last Thursday at USCIS, then spent 55 minutes holding on the phone on Friday waiting to speak with the Congressional Liaison there, and called again this morning receiving a promise that they would make a ruling on the petition today! He kept working it until they acted. They called him just a bit ago and he immediately called me. Since the US Embassy in Prague is ready to interview Druha Trava, all should go well from here on out! Bea Flaming - DT US Representative
DT's instruments and screen image of the Obamas and Czech leaders. Photo from www.druhatrava.cz
Next month's U.S. tour of the "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava, the band that played ahead of President Obama's speech in Prague earlier this year, is being threatened by delays in processing their visa requests. The Druha Trava web site reports that if the visas, which were applied for in May, do not come through, the band will have to cancel the 10-state, 18-gig tour, which is due to begin Sept. 4.
It seems so ridiculous that this band, who performed for an hour at Prague Castle before President Obama's speech there last April, are having such a hard time getting visa approval this year (especially after getting visas every year since 1993, except last year when we canceled the tour before we even filed for visas).
I first FedExed Druha Trava's visa petition on Friday, May 15 this year and I got notification that USCIS received it on Monday, May 18 with Receipt Number: WAC0916351796. According to the USCIS website it should take two months or less to process I-129 petitions for P-1 visas. I have been eagerly awaiting an approval notice since mid July.
On Tuesday, August 18 I received a letter from USCIS detailing more information and documentation that they wanted, including signed contracts for all booked gigs (I have been signing the papers that lawyers have been filing on my/Druha Trava's behalf since 2004 and I've never before had to provide signed contracts for every single gig, just for a representative number of them, but this is the first time I have filed by myself, as DT's beloved friend, Mary Gardner, who for a dozen years gather materials and paid the lawyers on our behalf, died of cancer last year).
In advance of the upcoming U.S. tour of the "Czechgrass" band Druha Trava, DT's U.S. web site has posted the translations that I made (with David Kraus) of 10 of Robert Krestan's original songs. See them by clicking HERE.
The songs include some that the group will perform during the Sept. 3-Oct 4 tour.
I got in to Ustron, in the way south of Poland, last night, driving from Oswiecim (Auschwitz) of all places....and into the Silesia Folk and Country Festival. It still gives me a thrill? chill? quick hit of the odd? when I hear a Czech band (in this case "Drops" this afternoon), in the market square of a Polish village (Ustron is a spa town at the foot of the Beskidy Mountains near the Czech border) singing "All Across America." Aside from the great banjo player Tony Trischka, who plays with Druha Trava tonight, I'm probably the only American here.
Drops. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
This is called an International Folk and Country Festival -- last night highlighted singer-songwriters: a group called Czerwony Tulipan (Red Tulip), the Warsaw-based singer Tomek Szwed, whom I have heard at other festivals and also interviewed a couple of years ago, and an English troubador called Pete Morton, who "sang out" with an energetic set that I have to admit was a little too spiritually uplifting for my taste! A bit hit with the crowd, though, even though he sang in English.
Tomasz Szwed. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
This afternoon, I was interviewed by Polish TV-Silesia for the feature they are doing on the Festival for the evening news tonight -- will post the link when it is up online!
Last night's concert was free, as was the afternoon performance today on the market square. Tonight's costs 10 zloty, I think -- about $3. It will be a mix of acoustic and more rocky stuff, with DT and the Slovak band Peter and the Rowers, one of the top European country acts.
I MUST photograph the food stalls -- last night I kept eating little pieces of local smoked goat cheese, grilled til almost melting and served with jam. Yum. Most of what else is on offer is what I have come to recognize as festival fare -- grilled sausages and chops, and other meats of various varieties. Oh yes, and beer. And honey vodka...
For several years I've been exploring the imaginary wild west in contemporary Europe -- observing and experiencing the many ways that Europeans embrace the mythology of the American Frontier to enhance, imbue or create their own identities. (Or, indeed, just have fun.) On this blog I will post pictures, stories and links relating to this multi-faceted subculture, from European country music to rodeos, theme parks, round-ups and saloons....
I'm an American writer and photographer who has researched and written widely on Jewish culture and heritage issues for more than three decades. I've written several books on the topic and manage the website www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe.
I also am working longterm on "Sturm, Twang and Sauerkraut Cowboys: Imaginary Wild Wests in Contemporary Europe," an exploration of the American West in the European imagination for which I won a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEH summer stipend grant. In 2015 I was the Arnold Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, SC. My other honors and awards include Poland's “Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit" and the Michael Hammer Tribute Research Award from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute (HBI).
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