PROTEST IN PRAGUE
To hear Czechoslovakia's dour Communist Party chief Gustav Husak tell it, his country is by now well on the way back to normalcy. By that, Husak means that Prague has once again begun to dance to Mosców's tone. Yet, the voice of Czechoslovakia's liberal dissidents has not been entirely mufAed-and nowhere is this more apparent than in the current popularity of protestní songy (protest songs). At the recept Bratislava song festival, a singer named Karel Cernoch won first prize for his bitingly anti-Soviet entry, "Song of My ,Country." And throughout Czechoslovakia, young and old alike play records and tapes that lambaste the Russian occupation and the present crop of conservative leaders in Prague.
The war between officials and protest singers is nothing new in Czechoslovakia. Under the regime of Stalinist dictator Antonín Novotny, some of the country's best singers were denied passports and forbidden to perform in public at all. During the sixteenmonth reign of Alexander Dubcek's reform government, the singers enjoyed a period of freedom. And after the Soviet-led invasion last summer, one of the most popular singers, Waldemar Matuska, sang an allegorical tone called "The Pied Piper":
For thousands ot miles the Pied Piper radiates fear.
He singl words like "we" and "our country," "peace and honor."
But he means you and your blood, war and a mailed fist.
When bard-liners replaced Dubcek last April, Czechoslovakia's censors began a crackdown. Still, protest songs continue to proliferate, often on illegally pressed records with false labels and in a staggering variety of styles from rock to mock Soviet Army Chorus. One of the most popular songstresses is pretty Marta Kubisova, 27, whose throaty, Edith Piaf-like rendition of the haunting "Prayer for Marta" has made her a national heroine:
May there be peace in this land.
May anger, enmity, fear and conflict flee.
May the government of your affairs be returned to your hands, O people.
Other singers take a less lofty approach. One song disdainfully refers to the five Warsaw Pact nations that participated in the August invasion:
I had a few lovers- five of them. Now I am alone.
They all told me they loved me.
But when the mask falls, the lie is recognized.
The love affair is over.
Well, just because of five pretty girls, the world will not fall apart.
Another tone contains some "good advice" to Russian troops still on Czechoslovak soil:
Go home, Ivan; Natasha is waiting for you.
Run home, the girls here don't like you.
Well, Ivan, what are you waiting for?
Don't you hear me?
Natasha will marry Volodya.
Go home and never come back.
Perhaps the youngest of all the prominent protest singers is Jaroslav Hutka, who sports wire-rimmed glasses, shoulder-length hair and a guitar. Hutka has abandoned the formal setting of a café stage and now serenades crowds along Prague's medieval Charles Bridge-when there are no policemen in sight. Among the young people who gather there, a favorite ballad is "Wait a While, People," which has a hopeful message:
The aroma of freedom is as sweet as the odor of lilacs.
Beauty will surely come back.
Newsweek
July 28, 1969
2024