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The Boskovice festival has its own special vibe By Kristina Alda For The Prague Post (July 15, 2004) Summertime in the Czech Republic brings with it a plethora of outdoor concerts and festivals -- so many that it can be difficult to keep track of them all. What makes the Boskovice Festival any different from the multitude of others this season? And where on earth is Boskovice, anyway? For starters, this little gem happens to be one of the oldest summer music festivals, now in its 12th year. It also holds the distinction of being one of the most remote from Prague, located in the northern tip of Moravia, the land of hearty food, good wine and plum brandy. With its well-earned reputation for excellent, slightly offbeat music, film screenings, theater performances, art exhibitions and poetry readings, Boskovice is well worth the trip.
This year, bands like Vertigo, KK Band, NUO, The Young Pekac and Big Band Trumpets will lend the festival a jazz flavor. Other musical genres will be represented by bands such as the playfully experimental Eggnoise and the Nahoru po Schodisti Dolu Band, a new-wave group from Prague that has been playing an exuberant blend of punk, ska and folk music for over 20 years. Other bands worth catching include the increasingly popular -123 minut, Ty Sycaci and Psi Vojaci, which started as an underground rock band during the communist regime. The relatively new jazz ensemble NUO, whose name stands for the Nusle Art Orchestra, should be one of the festival's highlights. Jakub Zitko, the band's frontman who plays Fender piano, describes their sound as contemporary jazz with hints of tango and disco. Not that the band plays anything resembling dance music, Zitko points out. "It's a kind of twisted, upended interpretation of different genres," says Zitko. "Our music is quite humorous, actually." The scenic setting and relaxed atmosphere mean that performers like returning to the festival. Ondrej Galuska, the singer (and guitar and trombone player) for Eggnoise, recalls his first time at the Boskovice Festival with fondness: "All I remember is that I drank a lot of wine, then got punched in the face at one of the pubs and ended the evening with a few shots of vodka." All in all, not a bad time.
Boskovice has its quieter moments, too. "The people at this festival somehow pay more attention," says Vrata Horcik of the Nahoru po Schodisti Dolu Band. Horcik speculates that the calmer atmosphere has something to do with the surroundings -- the ruins of a 13th-century castle and the well-preserved Jewish quarter -- which lend the town an almost otherworldly air. Fans of Blixa Bargeld, the lead singer of Germany's Einsturzende Neubauten and former Bad Seeds guitarist, will be pleased to learn that the poetry-reciting trio Kollaps will be doing a reading of Bargeld's dadaesque poetry. The film screenings this year range from serious to bizarre, with a documentary about the crimes committed under the communist regime at one end of the spectrum and Svankmajer's Otesanek (Greedy Guts) at the other. Thrown in for good measure will be a nonstop screening of the cult series Red Dwarf. Unlike most events of this kind, the festival takes place all over town. Contemporary jazz, pop, funk and poetry will resound among castle ruins, in the chateau amphitheater and at the old synagogue. This melting pot of diverse cultural elements is what makes the Boskovice Festival completely unique and at the same time somehow typically Czech.
Kristina Alda can be reached at
kalda@praguepost.com
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