Prague Folk Spring 68 on Charles Bridge (Portal of Prague)

Today Charles Bridge belongs to tourists, at the best to the tourist industry. However there were times where spontaneous meetings used to take place here. The author of these lines can still remember beautiful Christmas days during the depths of the totalitarian winter when total strangers would meet here to sing Christmas carols. It’s hard to say that these traditions started in 1968, nevertheless you can’t dispute the fact that Charles Bridge in Prague spring 68 was discovered by ballad-mongers and their audience. Sometime from March to summer 1968 you could find there the likes of Jaroslav Hutka or Vlastimil Třešňák.

Kaladra and Hutka didn’t like to play just for couple of friends. They wanted to be heard by as many people as possible. But at the beginning of 1968 organizing a concert took a very long time, four or more weeks. So Kalandra came up with an idea to play on Charles Bridge. Hutka liked the idea and at the time described the initiative like this: Kalanda came approximately in the middle of March with the idea that we could play on Charles Bridge. So we went together, sat on a sand box, this box stayed with us under that cross until summer. “

While they were both playing, surprised maundering passers-by, who at the least stopped for a moment, but usually stayed for a longer time, Zorka Růžová would approach them with a hat. At first people hesitated, eventually the more daring started putting money into the hat. The first day of the concert on Charles Bridge the folk duo made one thousand and five hundred crowns, which was for ballad-monger at that time a huge bundle of money.

Of course word got around Prague not only between the people of Prague but also between the ballad-mongers. Nice weather, beautiful surroundings and also the possibility of remarkable earnings tempted others on the bridge across Vltava. Apart from Třešňák there was a regular appearance of authors Miroslav Paleček – Michael Janík, or for example Vladimir Veit.

Useing the bridge as a venue had also its downside. Immediately at one of the first shows for example Hutka and Kalandra got into a dispute with the police. “We had I.D. cards whereby it said that we can perform in public. He was reading it but didn’t understand it much and said he will go and ask his boss and come back. He never came back. After that we were going there on a regular basis and the bridge became our hallmark, Hutka described.

What the uninformed police didn’t managed to complete, in next couple of months was done by mob of visitors and colleagues of both musicians. In summer Charles Bridge was so packed that it was uncomfortable. On top of that, everybody moved there. Even Vlasta Třešňák. It started to bother us because the bridge belonged to us. We were first there, Hutka explaind his reasons why in the middle of the year he together with Kalandara moved to Platýz.

Quotations by Jaroslav Hutka used in this article come from an unpublished interview with historians Filip Pospíšil and Peter Blažek. Photo: www.hutka.cz