Mira Wanek - a Czech songwriter with a legendary reputation
In Czech Books today we look at a form of writing that played a huge role in the fertile world of the Czech underground during the last years of the communist regime - the song lyric.
In secret at night
Hands try -
try to find
Where those shoeless
Run ahead breathless
After they have died
Cold and frozen ice
Still unbroken ice
Hands entreat Call to the barefeet To leave them some signs
There is Iceskin White and glossy iceskin...
What's in-
side no-one has a clue -
no-one has a clue!
The words of the song "Barefeet" from one of the most popular underground bands of the 1980s, "Uz jsme doma". In the days of communism, such bands expressed both the hopes and frustrations of the young generation - with a sound that was defiant, and subtle lyrics that spoke between the lines.
But the lyrics that we've just heard don't come from that time. They're from Uz jsme doma's very latest album, "Usi" - meaning Ears. Despite the huge changes since 1989, the band has remained both active and immensely popular. In today's Czech Books, Pavla Jonssonova will be talking to the band's singer-songwriter and guitarist, Mira Wanek, and among other things, they'll be looking at shifts in meaning that songs go through over time.
Pavla Jonssonova: "It seems to me that many sociologists talk about the shift towards the visual, that today's generation is the visual generation. Do you feel that happening?
Mira Wanek: Yeah, it may be true and it might be true also that people are not so attentive now to some longer message. They need some very short kind of video clip - a kind of "clipping" information. I always wrote very short lyrics. I mean short either in the length of the poetry or short in the way how to say that. I like short images, very exact.
Sweat drips from you
The frightened earth
Whispers low in your ear
How alone you are
Mira Wanek: With my lyrics I try to make a picture or image, not only with these words and with meanings of words and with meanings of these thoughts, but also with the structure, with how I use these words. It's also part of the message. Of course a very important part of it is the music as well. I believe that the combination in the expression of music and the expression of words and that if you put these together people can understand it even if they do not understand the lyrics. We travel a lot around Europe and the US and Canada, and any time we are abroad we always sing in the Czech language, but the same time, I don't know exactly why, but I believe that people understand it, even if they don't understand these words, because when we started to go to the US we sang in English maybe half each concert, a lot of people told me: "Don't do it, it's not necessary, because it's interesting for us to hear another language. It's interesting for us to get the music with the original sound of the language as well." And in the end I found this is the most polite thing I can do for foreigners. We sing it in the Czech language, so we bring them the original, and of course I want them to understand so I give them subtitles on covers and on the website and any time we talk I tell them I'm open to any explanation, but on stage they get the original.
Pavla Jonssonova: Would you trace different reactions from your audience towards your lyrics over time?
Mira Wanek: Some of my songs are already twenty years old and of course I wrote some of these lyrics in a completely different situation, different conditions, and with different feelings and different reasons, but people take it always with their point of view of the present time. It's not only about the political situation, it's also about their own private feelings that day.
Pavla Jonssonova: These usually also reflect what's happening in the outside world.
Mira Wanek: Yes, sure, and I'm always surprised how these lyrics, even though they are the same twenty years or eighteen years, they change even in my mind, even in my feelings, so I'm sure audiences have similar feelings for that.
Pavla Jonssonova: Do you have any special reactions to the war in Iraq?
Mira Wanek: It happened to me, on our last album "Ears" there is a song "Fear". I didn't write that song about the present situation, I wrote it years ago, it comes from my experience, especially with the communist system - these lyrics are about power or any military power and on the other side there is faith. In the name of god a lot of people kill other people. And of course power and faith, they just don't ask other people about their feelings. They just do what they want, what they feel is good for them. At the end of this song there is a sentence: I fear from both, faith and power, because they don't ask other people about their feelings.
Faith and power Power and faith Peace or inquietude Faith and power Fight
ever
For vain attitude
Faith and power
Fight ever
For vain attitude
Faith and power
Power and faith
Peace or inquietude
Faith is not power that's
Just what tries to warm us up
Warm us like a blanket on the lap
Power that is hardly faith
That's what tries to cover fear
Fear of dying holding life too dear
I fear both faith and power
They have no need to use any question marks.
And if you want to read more of Miroslav Wanek's lyrics, you can find them on the website www.uzjsmedoma.com.
