Kalemegdan Disk - ROCK FROM EASTERN EUROPE

Supraphon Release Information

Fusion music, or jazz rock, a term known in Czechoslovakia, surprisingly did not find such fertile ground in the South Moravian metropolis as in Prague. Of course, there were also tendencies to create their own variant of this fusion music, mostly instrumental. For example, a smaller group led by guitarist Igor Vavrda occasionally separated from the renowned Gustav Brom Orchestra and presented its own form of fusion music; from the point of view of rockers, jazz rock was presented for some time by the group Nucleus, but the real representatives of the genre can be considered the group Ch.A.S.A.

Its precursor could be partly traced in a group with a bizarre name: Šuchra-Luf Band, which consisted of Antonín Stríž (then still electric guitar), Ivo Albrecht (bass guitar, studying at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering) and Miroslav “Kyselác” Veselý (drums). The band emphasized the expressive conception of its own compositions and was active from 1970 to 1971. They performed in Medlánky, Lesná (Horizont Club), Panton Club (Rooseveltova ulica / Roosevelt street) and the famous Šelepka. After the departure of “Kyselác”, Stríž “retrained” on drums for two years and a new musical community was slowly emerging on the horizon.

The group was formed in early 1973, when conditions were very difficult in Czechoslovakia for founding new rock groups, let alone groups experimenting with different musical forms. Their rehearsal room was a jazz club under the House of Arts on Malinovského námestí (Malinovsky square). Then the band moved to the northern periphery of Brno to Reckovice in the garden of the drummer’s family house, a former laundry.

The name of the band (Ch.A.S.A.) in individual letters represented the surnames of the members of the band, which began to play with the following line-up: Pavel Chmelar (baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone, transverse flute, piccolo), Ivo Albrecht (bass guitar), Antonín Stríž (drums) and Jirí Adam (electric guitar). The group was later joined by Ivan Havlícek (percussion).

In the club on Šelepka the band discovered a singer with a guitar Mirka Krivánková (formerly a member of the band Premier), who interestingly used a demanding jazz scat and moreover in an unprecedented range of four octaves. Her voice became an integral part of their distinctive sound. There were not many female jazz singers in our country, and the more Ch.A.S.A. attracted attention.

Krivánková consistently honored jazz form and improvisation, and in her expression, partly inspired by the Polish singer Urszula Dudziak and the Brazilian singer based in California Flora Purim, she marked a significant departure from standard vocal expression, where the voice as a vocal instrument often took on the role of a “musical” instrument. By not singing lyrics, Krivánková avoided the scrutiny of textual concepts by self-proclaimed cultural strategists at musical playbacks, who looked for ambiguous hidden messages and decided on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the sung lyrics.

Full album: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mpPQaZjhd9O_NfXRja_8GzzXVBFAjt54o

Tracklist

1. Pohostinství “U Strížu” 11:00
2. Brazilská dechovka 4:16
3. Beránka videti 9:39
4. Bez názvu 6:20
5. Do Newportu daleko 9:45
6. Na druhý breh 7:34
7. Santiago 7:54
8. Necekaný dopis 6:16
9. Chasablanca 6:38