Czech musicians surviving aboveground

Before communism fell in Czechoslovakia, bands such as Psi Vojaci had to conspire to play their banned music. Now band member Filip Topol can play his music in public

In this story: Dada movement: Buty's calling Rooted in bluegrass RELATED STORIES, SITES

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (CNN) -- Communist rule in Czechoslovakia meant musical censorship. The tunes and words of the West were banned, forbidden, dangerous.

But passionate Czech music fans found ways around the restrictions in the Soviet bloc country, risking jail to stage underground concerts, or saving a week's wages to buy a Deep Purple album on the black market.

AUDIO "Mole" is hit for Czech band Buty WAV sound Psi Vojaci turns it up with "Figure Skater" WAV sound Ivan Kral sings "Winner Takes All" WAV sound   ALSO World music festival: The pride of Prague

It was only fitting that musicians played a large part in bringing that censorship to an end on November 17, 1989.

On that day, at the National Theatre, a group of actors and musicians saw police beating student demonstrators on the street below. They promptly called a nationwide strike.

Their silence lent volume to the Velvet Revolution, which toppled communism in Czechoslovakia. And that marked the beginning of an explosion of artistic freedom that has shaped the current musical landscape in the Czech Republic.

The band Psi Vojaci, whose members describe themselves as a goulash of classical, jazz and Doors influences, was an underground legend during communism, flourishing in spite of state repression. It's also one of the few bands to survive the freedom that followed.

"The groups that were caught unprepared by the revolution, they suddenly didn't have anything to protest against, so they came to an end," said band mate Filip Topol. "But we never had this problem. We had art."

Before 1989, though, the only outlet for their art was a series of secret concerts.

"Each time, it was very conspiratorial -- kind of James Bond," Topol said. "There were situations ... when we arrived in some village, and then we boarded a sealed truck which took us to the venue. But we didn't even know where we were going."

One reason for Psi Vojaci's enduring popularity has to do with Topol's showmanship, said Czech music critic Jiri Cherni. With Topol, the show comes first, said Cherni; crowds appreciate it.

"Sometimes blood would be streaming from his fingers while he was playing," Cherni said. "This was intellect and street rock 'n' roll coming together for a single purpose: to fight against totalitarianism and lack of freedom."

Radek Pastrnak is a member of Buty, one of the most successful Czech bands of the last decade

The most successful Czech band of the last decade is Buty, which hails from Ostrava, a steel and mining town in Moravia, located in the eastern edge of the republic.

But even before the 1989 uprising, "underground" wouldn't have best described the band. It was more on the edge, a group whose unusual play on words may best be described as "Dada-esque" -- art that stresses the absurd.

"Buty is a band who falls squarely into the Dada artistic movement," Cherni said. "Buty is, to a large extent, a lyrical phenomenon, and I'm not sure if that would transfer very well to foreign markets."

"Our method is to pick up on things that have already been done," said Buty singer Radek Pastrnak.

Jiri Cherni, a Czech music critic, credits Psi Vojaci's enduring popularity to Topol's showmanship at the piano

"We just make improbable structure out of them and present them back to the public. And people -- because they're use to it, because they've already heard it before -- they buy it on a massive scale."

Not as surreal as Buty, but still strange in its own right, is Druha Trava. A Czech bluegrass band, it's so good that the group has successfully taken its music on tour in the United States.

Bluegrass has roots on both sides of the Atlantic, said lead singer Robert Krestan.

"Its roots reach into the 1920s and '30s, when groups of young workers spent their weekends camping in the countryside, singing and playing guitar, mandolins and banjos," he explained.

"After the communist coup, this movement -- known as the "tramps" -- re-emerged and started playing the instruments from their grandfathers' attics. In the '60s, they heard bluegrass music on Western records and radio, using these same instruments, and they became captivated."

Someone who has made the reverse journey, coming from America to here, is Ivan Kral. He was one of Czechoslovakia's finest exports in the '70s, when he played in New York with Iggy Pop and Patti Smith.

Robert Krestan, right, is the lead singer for the Czech bluegrass band Druha Trava. The band has successfully taken its music on tour in the United States

But he found making music too confining in America, and longed to return home.

"Being born here, being influenced by Czech folk music and roots, being influenced by the Italian hit parade (and) the French hit parade, I couldn't do it in the United States," Kral said. "It was looked down upon."

So Kral returned to his native land.

"It gave me the chance to do things I wasn't able to do, or write, or publish in the United States," he said.

Psi Vojaci
Buty
Druha Trava

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.