Anne Marie Kenny: From singing at Havel’s invitation to business in ‘90s Prague
US singer Anne Marie Kenny first came to Czechoslovakia in 1990 at the invitation of President Václav Havel, who facilitated a concert for her at a Prague club. She later launched a successful employment and training agency and remained in her ancestral homeland for the rest of the decade. Kenny shares these stories and much more in her memoir A Song for Bohemia, which has just been launched in Czech under the title Moje píseň pro Čechy. We spoke at the café at Prague’s House of the Black Madonna.
I’d first like to ask you about your background. You have Czech roots?
“Yes, I do. On my mother’s side. She’s a Janda, Jandová, but it was her grandparents who came over in the late 1800s, from Moravia.”
Was there any Czech at home, in your household?
“There was some, but not a lot. Only a few words that are kind of funny and I’m not sure I can say them on the radio [laughs].”
You say one amusing thing in your book – that your dad, who was Irish-American, hence your name, would use Czech phrases just for a laugh.
“My dad had a way with languages. I think during World War II he picked up French and Italian very well.
“And he would say phrases like ‘dej mi pusu, hezka holka’ [give me a kiss, pretty girl] and things like that; he would enjoy doing that, throwing people off guard.”
At the turn of the ‘90s you were living in France where you were working as a singer, singing in clubs. At that point Václav Havel was quite recently installed as president of Czechoslovakia. You got in touch with Havel – can you please tell us that story?
“We were living in Paris first, we moved there in 1983, for five years, and then we moved to Nice.
“We were there during the Velvet Revolution and this whole domino effect, when first the Berlin Wall fell, and watching on television countries having their revolutions one after the other.
“I put [my lyrics] in an envelope, sent it to the Hradčany Castle, never thinking I’d get a response – and I did.”
“And when I saw the people on Wenceslas Square – because I am half Czech – I was particularly delighted.
“That was even when Havel hadn’t been installed yet, but then after a few days we found out he was the president, and we had read some of his work in The International Herald Tribune; I had never been to Czechoslovakia.
“Then I wrote just spontaneously, just spontaneously I went to my piano – but then I am a singer and an artist and that’s kind of what I do, if I want to really react in an artistic way.
“I wrote a poem to the music of Jacques Brel’s When We Only Have Love, Quand on n'a que l'amour, but with totally new words that fit this.
“And yes, I put them in an envelope, sent it to the Hradčany Castle, never thinking I’d get a response – and I did.”
That’s kind of amazing to me. Havel had the eyes of the world on him, he was a kind of rock star president, at this time of incredible change, and still somehow you got mail back from him.
“I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t expect it, it was a gift, a pure gift.
“I got mail back from [one-time state music promotion agency] Pragokoncert.
“The director of it was Ivo Letov at the time and he said, Thank you so much on behalf of President Havel, he read your poem, and would like to invite you to come and sing at our club, Reduta, at the time of your convenience – give me a call.”
Reduta of course is a famous Prague jazz club with a long history even at that point. You played two shows at the Reduta – what are your memories of performing there?
“It was October 1990, the house was full, wafts of smoke all over the place and anybody who’s been there knows it’s a pretty small room – and those were the days when almost everybody was smoking.
“But the audience was so receptive. As a singer, kind of like a writer, you’re standing up there and singing and you have to kind of feel the vibes, because you don’t know – no-one’s saying, Hey, this is good, we like it.
“The applause will tell you some of that, but you can just feel this vibe in that place and I felt like we were delivering something people wanted.
“And yes, the applause was great. I met so many people – journalists, other artists, diplomats – afterwards, coming backstage thanking me. And many of those people are still my lifelong friends.”
What impression did Prague make on you in those days, less than a year after the revolution?
“I was pretty bowled over. I had been living in France, mind you. Now I’m a Midwesterner in the United States, from a medium-sized city [Omaha], not New York City or anything like that.
“Prague is like a little jewel. When we first drove in, seeing the Castle, at night – we were mesmerised by that.”
“But we had lived in Paris, we had lived in Nice, and then here I am in Prague – and the beauty of the city was absolutely stunning.
“Yes, I love Paris, which is majestic, but Prague is like a little jewel, and mystical.
“And when we first drove in, seeing the Castle, at night – we were so tired but we were mesmerised by that.
“And as I say after our concerts I met wonderful, wonderful people.”
The following year you began living in Prague and you started a company providing office services. What kind of things were you doing?
“It was such a pivotal moment. I was so taken by this city and the people that I knew I wanted to live here.
“I had to talk my husband into that, and I also had to come back another time to make sure I really wanted to; I ended up coming back several times after the concerts to see what I could do here.
“Could I sing? Maybe not, the arts weren’t subsidised any more like they would have been maybe in the past. My artist friends, musician friends, were saying that they were even having trouble finding jobs.
“But the business scene was amazing and eclectic. I had been a secretary in my life, way back when, and I thought I would start a secretarial service for visiting businesspeople.
“It ended up being an employment agency, once we got into it. But that’s what we started to do.”
You also did, I guess, an amazing service for Prague in that you translated menus in restaurants, which was a new thing then.
“It really was. You’d go to all these restaurants and say, Máte jídelní lístek v angličtíně?’ [do you have a menu in English] and they would go, No, ne. And I thought, Hmmm?
“I also thought it would be a quick way to make money. I was establishing a business and we could legitimately issue an invoice... well, we couldn’t right way, but we would soon.
“And it was something I could do while we were getting our name out there for what we really planned to do, which was to be a phone-fax-mailing address for visiting businesspeople, but also provide secretarial services.
“My secretary comes into my office and says, Someone named Mr. Johnson Johnson is on the phone.”
“So yes, we did some menu translations. But very quickly we got a call, Johnson & Johnson called.
“But my secretary of course didn’t know any of these international companies and she comes into my office and says, Someone named Mr. Johnson Johnson is on the phone. I said, Hand me that phone [laughs], and I answered it.
“It was the new company manager for Johnson & Johnson and he said, Listen, we need secretarial services but we want a secretary in our office – do you have anyone?
“I said, May I call you back in 10 minutes? I hung up, looked at my secretary and said, Would you go over and be his secretary for just two days? It’s called temporary staffing.
“She had never heard of it, no-one had heard of that. She went over and then within two days I got her back and found some other people and we became a staffing company.”
To digress slightly for a second, there was one thing in the book that surprised me which was that in 1992, when you were heading here for the split of Czechoslovakia, you and your friends were concerned that something bad could happen here, that there could be some chaos. You had taken measures like, for example, getting foreign currencies and keeping your gas tank full. What exactly were you afraid of?
“We were looking at what was going on in Yugoslavia. We knew it was far away. We knew it was a different country, of course.
“And then it came the time when they were talking about Slovakia wanting to split. Just in case, we weren’t sure, we thought it would be wise to have a back-up plan.
“I say ‘we’ – my friends who were especially talking about it with me were Marie Novak and Steve Kelly, who were doing training and consulting.
“So we just said, Let’s just have a back-up plan, and we did: where we would meet if we had to… Those were the days before cell phones and email.
“Of course we were registered with the American Embassy, but my thought was, There are around 2,000 Americans here – though someone may correct me about that – how would they contact us all?
“They were talking about Slovakia wanting to split and we thought it would be wise to have a back-up plan.”
“So we had a getaway plan, let’s just say.”
Speaking of the American Embassy, I guess when you were first here the ambassador from the US would have been Shirley Temple-Black. Did you meet her?
“I did get to meet her and I was really thrilled to meet her, because as a kid we used to watch her movies.
“She was a very serious diplomat and wonderful woman, a human rights activist. So I did get to meet her, yes.”
Getting back to your business and developing into an employment agency, who were some of your better-known clients?
“Oh my goodness, most of the American companies. The law firms, like Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, Allen & Overy, though I’m not sure if they were American or British, but they were international, Baker & McKenzie, the big six accounting firms, Proctor & Gamble, IBM – they were all calling us.
“We had many, many of the international firms. We were a staffing company, or an employment agency and training company, and we were the only ones focused on support staff: secretaries, receptionists, back office people. Every other employment agency did not want to focus so narrowly.”
You say also that some of these international firms were reluctant to hire people who they felt could be kind of tainted by being part of the previous system, or working for state agencies.
“That was a sticky situation, because these company managers who came were saying things like, Send me someone who, yes, does not have any bad habits, has never worked for a state company, because their business ethics are not the same as what we want.
“But that’s exactly why we did training – to let the Czechs know what’s expected in an international company.
“Managers were saying, Send me someone who does not have any bad habits, has never worked for a state company.”
“And I do hope we never talked down to anyone. It was more like information: Here’s what to expect if you want to work for an international company, and here’s what they’re going to expect from you.
“But I would sort of have to train these managers that we’re not going to discriminate. If somebody came and they had worked at a state agency, great, they could be a candidate.
“We used to get people talking and I thought they were making sexist comments. That happened pretty often. I’m sorry to say this, but they’d say, Send me someone good-looking.
“One guy said, Nice legs. I said, Excuse me [laughs]. And they would say, Hey, don’t give me any of that American cultural correctness.
“And I’d say, This isn’t American cultural correctness, this is me telling you the Czech Labour Code is against this.
“But I would still keep them as clients, because that’s our job, to train – and hopefully we trained them too [laughs].”
Prague in the ‘90s is known for this influx of a lot young people, I guess many quite fresh out of university. You were a bit older, you were working in business and having a kind of serious life while they were hanging out in The Globe writing poetry or whatever. How did you view all those young people here?
“Oh, I thought they were great and I kind of wished I were one of them sometimes [laughs].
“I was about 39 when I first came here and I think some of the younger ones who came, who were probably fresh out of college, came to teach English and that was something they could do. I thought that was great – I thought it was a much-needed service, actually.
“I was very much tending to business during the day but I was also out partying.”
“But keep in mind, I was hanging out at the bars sometimes too. Much to my later chagrin, and I speak about it in my book on a very intimate a personal level, that, yeah, I was very much tending to business during the day but I was also out partying.”
You mention also going to Jo’s Bar, which was a famous expat hangout. There are also many other references in the book that I think will resonate a lot with people who were here in the ‘90s. Even for me hearing the name of the shop Fruits de France, which was opposite the main post office, where they had, like, strawberries in winter, was a real throwback to those days.
“Oh, I so enjoyed being able to make pesto. Mind you, I had just come from Nice, where you could get your basil and your tomatoes any time of your year.
“Yes, that was just great, being able to make my pesto sauce with fresh basil anytime, once Fruits de France came – I don’t think they came when I was first here.”
I don’t know what year they came but also there were many names of people who I and many others would know in the book, such as [Prague Post editor] Alan Levy, [former Hollywood executive] Norbert Auberbach – you met a lot of interesting people.
“It was really great, yes, I met many interesting people.
“And 25 years later when I was researching for this book in the last five years – it took me five years to write and research this book – I was meeting people then too.
“I had met [illustrator and writer] Peter Sis back in the ‘90s when I was with Zdenek Merta, the pretty famous composer and pianist – he and I went on a short tour where I was singing and he was playing for me, in the US.
“That was back in 1990, I think, or 1991 and we stopped in New York and he was a friend of Peter Sis and I met Peter then.
“And then in the last five years, when I was researching, I re-contacted Peter and after many wonderful conversations, and his ideas on what really was the significance of this Velvet Revolution and the before and after, from communism to democracy and the free market – what happened then and how is that affecting people today even?
“He and I talked for hours about that in different conversations. And then I was so honoured that he offered to provide the cover illustration.”
As you say, Peter Sis has done cover for your book, which is called Moje píseň pro Čechy in Czech. You’ve just had the launch of the Czech version here in Prague – why is it coming out first in Czech and then in English?
“Well, that would have been my ideal scenario anyway.
“I was looking for a publisher both in the US and here and I met, through another artist friend of mine Jiří Votruba, who has inspired me all these years, because his art is so playful and interesting and so Czech…”
He’s the guy who does all the postcards with Franz Kafka and the stuff you see in all the tourist shops?
“Absolutely. I wear his T-shirt to breakfast every morning to breakfast at the hotel [laughs]; he has a lot of different T-shirts with some of his artwork on them.
“He introduced me to Martin Vopenka with [publishers] nakladatelství Práh. Martin read my manuscript and said he’d be interested in it if I made a few changes.
“I said, No problem at all. It really wasn’t any major change to my writing but kind of moving things around.
“So because he stepped up and said, Yes, I will publish your book it came out in Czech first, which I’m very happy about.
“I’m doing a form of self-publishing for the English version and it should be out on Amazon and through Barnes & Noble and most distributors around the end of November.”
Just to kind of complete your Prague story, at the end of the 1990s you sold your business and went back to the States. But today Prague obviously has changed enormously since you first arrived, late in 1990. How does it feel being here now?
“A bit surreal. I do come back often, so it isn’t that I have only been in the States these last 20-something years; I come back often and I keep my friendships.
“How does it feel? The mood has changed, naturally. Of course the ’90s was an extremely special time, full of hope and new possibilities.
“We know what’s going on in the world now; we have a war here in Europe.
“And people’s mood… I think some of it has stayed hopeful, but with others it has become very, very cynical – it was back then too, even in the ‘90s, but not like it is now.
“I think cynicism is, excuse me for saying this anyone who kind of feels that way, a lazy out. It’s a way of giving up. And democracy is something to work for.”
