FolkWorld Live Review 01/2005 by Paul Verdonk
Music works in mysterious ways… As we were planning a last minute
trip to Prague, I cast my eye on an article in Folkworld on Chech folk music
(Folk in Tschechien, Article in the German
version of issue 29). Along with Google I found out that in our days over
there there wasn't much to do. Wrong! Every evening dozens of classical concerts
(not our bag) and loads of DJ's (also not). So we set out on our own, looked
for the different concert papers and magazines, and yes, we struck right!!
As I had read the above-mentioned article, I recognised the name and place of one band, and found out it was a few blocks away from our hotel. We decided to give it a try, and what an evening we got.
We came in the Balbinova poeticka hospudza, someone (the owner I suppose) spoke to us in Chech, and found a few very friendly looks and English words, after we said we wanted two tickets for the concert of Nerez. He lead us through a door to a little concert room with bar and shaky seats, where already some 40-50 people were waiting for the band to begin. Within minutes they started and they were good, the musicality was great and the ambiance was fantastic. All in the crowd were singing softly along, while Zdenek Vrestal (v/acc g), Vit Sazavsky (v/acc g) Filip Benesovsky (b/v) and David Uher (small dr/perc) were enjoying themselves and their public on the stage. Fine differences in the voices made it very good to listen to, even if you don't understand its content lyrically (everything was in Chech).
The one song that had English words in it made perfectly clear they made a joke of their minor knowledge of this foreign language. In the meantime influences from all over Central Europe conjured nicely with Gypsy, Jewish and Spanish folklore.
After a break (with nice and cheap beer) they returned to the stage and Filip (the bass player) showed he could get a lot of different sounds out of his synthesised bass. All in service of the music, as he did every time. The crowd got more excited and so they couldn't get away without several encores, and 10 p.m. sharp they had to stop (due to regulations, it seemed ).
After again some beer, and with some very fine CDs (jednou mer, 2x and nasup) we left this very cosy place, humming along with Nerez…
Check out www.nerez.sk and www.balbinka.cz if you want to know some more of this.
Photo from Nerez's website
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