Katka Garcia – Alfons Mucha’s cosmopolitan great-granddaughter
Katka Garcia, as her name suggests, is half Czech and half Spanish, with a bit of Russian thrown in. In addition to that she sings traditional music from Ireland and Scotland. She currently lives in Dublin and teaches Spanish at Trinity College and occasionally comes to Prague to perform with her fellow musicians. I caught up with her during her last visit.
Where did you grow up?
“I was born in Prague and when I was approximately four years old my family moved to Spain because my grandfather and his family were granted Spanish nationality they were deprived of at the end of the Civil War. And from then on I lived in Barcelona for about twelve years and at the age of fifteen and a half my mother decided to go back to Prague and I continued growing up in Prague.”
Speaking of your mother, can you tell me a few words about her family history?
“Well my mother happens to be the granddaughter of the painter Alfons Mucha. She currently runs a design studio and she designs jewellery and glass objects and metal artworks.”
You said you moved to Spain at the age of four, so what was your mother tongue?
“It was Czech. Actually during a brief spell in my childhood I nearly forgot Czech because my father decided it was more practical to learn Spanish fast and subsequently spoke only Spanish in the house. But the problem was that my mother didn’t speak Spanish when she moved to Spain so at one point she found herself speaking to her daughters in Czech and the daughters answering in Spanish and that must have been very hard. From then on she made sure Czech was used at home.”
What was it like coming back to the Czech Republic at the age of fifteen?
“Well it wasn’t easy. I wouldn’t say it was an easy experience but I am grateful for it. The experience that stands out the most would be the lack of light. In Barcelona light was a very important element.”
“When it become clear that my mother wanted to move back to Prague, by coincidence I suppose my dad started to give me tapes with music. I suppose I had reached the age when he considered me to be ready for music from him. He had friends from Scotland and Ireland and he just gave me two tapes with Irish and Scottish music.
“I became very attached to those tapes, first of all because I really liked the melodies - at that stage I couldn’t really understand the lyrics that well and the quality of the recording was really terrible. Afterwards, when we moved to Prague, I started worshipping the tapes even more because they reminded me of my dad. And I suppose that was the way I got into it.”
One Last Cold Kiss, a song from Katka’s most recent album called Woven Ways, recorded with a group of Czech musicians. She started to perform publicly in the late 1990s with an Irish Prague-based band called Dún an Doras.
“There are a lot of Irish people living in Prague now but at that stage there was a particularly high number of musicians in town. And there was one group, its name was The Celtic Ray, and I got to know them and started attending Irish music sessions and started playing the tin whistle. And that’s how I really got into it. Then some of these Irish people left and one of the musicians, Rene Starhon, decided he wanted a band of his own. So he met some people in Ireland and made out a new band with new Irish people.”
That was the band Dún an Doras. What does it mean in English?
“Dun an Doras means close the doors in Irish.”
How did you come up with that title?
“There are quite a few versions of the story. The one I remember is that we were invited to play at an Irish wedding here in Prague and there was an Irish fiddle player. And at that stage we had the band but we didn’t have a name for it. So Rene started asking people for a name and he asked this man if he could tell him a sentence in Irish. And I suppose this guy had learned Irish at school and Dún an Doras was one of the sentences he would have known. And René liked the rhythm and the sound of the phrase.”
Can you describe the music that you played?
“In the beginning, when the band was mostly Irish, it was traditional session pieces. The instrumental pieces were traditional session pieces. These Irish people left again and the band became mostly Czech, with mostly Czech musicians. They started composing music largely influenced by Irish and Scottish tradition formally, but the pieces were theirs.
“In the beginning I sang in English because I didn’t have the linguistic training but then I started attending Irish language classes. And that’s how I got into the Irish language.”
“Well I am trying to. I go to Irish classes and I try to learn it. It’s tough. But I now sing Irish songs.
You now live in Dublin and you teach Spanish at Trinity College. Are you planning to settle down for good in Dublin?
“That’s a tough question. I don’t know. I see myself in Dublin for the next few years, definitely, but whether it will be for good is very hard to say. I am homesick for Prague and for Barcelona as well.”
