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Written in fRoots issue 258, 2004
 

RADOŠOV
Láska A Vojna
Indies MAM224-2 (2003)

The Radošov music ensemble are one of those instrumental and vocal groups who, in their role as accompanists to a colourful folk-dance ensemble, are usually relegated to the gloom of an arena’s side-stage but often outshine many of the the music-only bands booked at festivals, while often having to pitch their mattresses on the floor at some local school billet with all the dancers and come and go when the coach does, without much chance to hang out with other festival musicians.
      Formed thirty years ago, the present line-up has been together since 2002, but over the years there has been a continuous through-put of talented musicians young and presumably enthusiastic enough to put up with that kind of dorm culture, and with the discipline of constant rehearsal and delivering just what’s needed for the show and getting it spot-on every time; not for them the possibility of spontaneously changing an arrangement or stopping for a chat with the audience. The whole album was recorded in a single day at Czech Radio, and they are, indeed, impeccably tight, with very fine male and female singers solo and ensemble and snappy, elegantly arranged instrumentation of cimbalom, violins, viola, clarinet, flutes and bass, with guesting oboe and percussion. Veronika Ulmanová’s clear reedy vocals and the powerful tenor voice of the band’s first violinist and arranger Radim Havlíček stand out in particular.
      They sound pretty much as the ensemble must have sounded for most of those thirty years and, no, it’s not radical, pushing-the-boundaries music. But it is an excellently executed example of its type, and that’s a type capable of stirring audiences worldwide. As, for example, did another Moravian band at Womad Reading a couple of years ago. The booklet shows the band dressed in summer casuals, and identified by names, rather than as a unit in folklore uniform, which shows that perhaps they, too, feel it’s time for them to be viewed in their own right. Radošov musicians – take a bow.
      www.indiesrec.cz

© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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