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A Czech expat returns to some hard business lessons

Rudy Linka leaves his mark as a jazz crusader

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 15th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Linka has proved adept as both an entertainer and concert promoter.
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Jazz guitarist Rudy Linka looked remarkably good for a guy who had just finished putting on a jazz festival in four different Czech cities over five days, followed by a short tour with his own band in Italy. Typically, arts organizers are burnout cases by the time their event is over, exhausted and muttering darkly about never doing that again. But Linka was the picture of energy and enthusiasm as he talked over coffee Aug. 1 before heading back to the United States.
By any measure, this year’s Bohemia Jazz Fest was a runaway success. In just its second year, it expanded from three cities to four, and from eight bands to 12, drawing a total of 45,000 listeners, more than double last year’s attendance. Linka was, in a word, flabbergasted.
“I asked myself what would make me go to New Jersey and stand in the rain to listen to a concert with 10,000 other people,” said Linka, who makes his home in New York City. “Miles Davis and Charlie Parker — really, that’s about it.”
Current stars like Kenny Garrett, Dave Holland and Al Foster were enough to draw crowds in the Czech Republic. Those are not exactly household names, nor is jazz the most popular music in this country. But Linka felt the audiences understood what he was trying to do.
“They may not know the music, but they recognize quality,” he said.
That’s what attracted the main sponsor of this year’s festival, Pilsner Urquell. Good sponsorship is the key to success in almost any endeavor in this country, and Linka managed to score the one sponsor that makes every event organizer salivate. How did he do it?
“They came to us after last year’s festival,” he said. “They said, ‘We’re selling a lot of beer, but we want to attract intellectuals, the management crowd. And those people listen to jazz.’ ”
It helps that Linka is himself an established jazz star who had the support of the U.S. Embassy in putting on the festival, for which he recruits his friends to play. But that’s no guarantee of anything, especially for a Czech expat who left the country when he was 17 and is, for all intents and purposes, an American now. In that sense, he offers a rare perspective on doing business here: He can talk and drink with the locals, but their customs amaze him as much as any foreigner just off the plane.
“What surprised me most was how many people expected bribes,” he said. “Over and over I had to explain, ‘If you give us 500,000 Kč, that doesn’t mean I’m going to give you 200,000 back.’ ”
And if potential sponsors insisted on kickbacks?
“They didn’t become sponsors,” Linka said with a shrug.
There were also the usual bureaucratic roadblocks.
“In Italy, it’s no problem to have a free Elton John concert next to the Colosseum,” Linka said. “Here, every apparatchik in the country told me that jazz doesn’t belong on Old Town Square. Fortunately, [Prague Mayor] Pavel Bém wanted it and made it happen.”
What drives a successful musician abroad to return to his homeland and battle his way through corruption and atrophied bureaucrats to put on free concerts?
“In my own small way, I’m trying to help rebuild a country that was butchered for so long,” Linka said. “There’s all this totally amazing architecture here, but it’s like a museum or a movie set. It’s not connected to what’s really happening in the outside world.
“When I came back and saw that, it seemed obvious to me: I could connect the old and the new by bringing music here. I know all the guys, I still have friends here, it will be easy.”
Of course, as Linka learned, nothing is that easy. “If I knew going in what I know now, I would never have done it,” he admitted. But if the experience was trying, it was also rejuvenating for him.
“This was my mission,” he declared. “I found a way to do it, and I’m feeling absolutely great about that. I couldn’t be happier.”
What mark this will leave on the country remains to be seen. But Linka, looking through the eyes of an expat returning home, already sees things that other people do not.
“Our last concert this year was in České Budějovice, where we played on the main town square,” he said. “After Al Foster left the stage, I looked around and I thought, this square has been changed forever.”

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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