In the last interview, we discussed your plans and you told me that you would like to work with a new circus in addition to the record. For example, with the Losers Cirque Company, with whom you were just meeting at that moment. Is there anything in the process yet?
Fortunately, no. Fortunately, it didn’t come true (Laughs).
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Why fortunately?
Well, because it’s much better to dream about something than to make it come true, right? (Laughs) That dream fades away and you have to quickly figure out what to dream about again. So I’m glad that it hasn’t happened yet and that it’s still in the clouds.
I was just wondering – because I know that you ran away to the circus for a year at the age of seventeen before your high school graduation – if you miss it.
I found the circus in what I do. The principle that I am always traveling from concert to concert, I take these things with me in the form of my scenography.
Your scenography is an accordion, a chair…
And a small table and curtains like that behind me… And sometimes I also bring paper roses, it’s basically like a mobile shooting range. So I’m roaming around the Czech Republic for now. And I actually flew over the sea – or over a big puddle, to be precise. I also had a concert in America.
That’s what I would like to say at the age of twenty-seven – that I had a concert in America.
Well, I can do that (Laughs). It was in New York and then in Philadelphia in a small coffee shop like this. And then, I’ll brag about it, Lucie, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, which is probably their most famous cultural stand.
I understand that Czechs came there, but there were definitely Americans there too. How did they absorb what you came to present to them?
There were a lot of Czechs in New York. And there were fewer of them in the Kennedy Center, there it was about fifteen percent. That was the first time I tested whether it was really possible to perform for such an international audience. And yes, they absorbed it somehow, they processed it somehow, they didn’t boo me. There was even an encore.
Paradoxically, in the end, they liked the Czech songs the most, because they perceived it as something oriental, which they don’t have there.
I made the program special because, I think, every culture found something there. There was French, Spanish, English – I translated some of my lyrics into English with a friend from England – and above all, there are a lot of Latinos living there, so they appreciated the Spanish, the rancheras that I sang. Paradoxically, in the end, they liked the Czech songs the most, because they perceived it as something oriental, which they don’t have there. So I brought them a piece of our folklore.
Could you describe the genre in which you operate?
Try it!
Okay, I’ll try. Chanson, cabaret, burlesque.
Probably not burlesque, I don’t take off my clothes there…
Wait, she doesn’t have to take her clothes off in burlesque. I studied burlesque because of you and learned that burlesque “is a literary or musically dramatic genre of entertainment depicting comic and farcical stories with the intention of making light of reality. To achieve the goal, the authors use the means of variety shows, cabaret and striptease.” You don’t have to do everything, but you belong there.
That is great. All I really miss is undressing (Laughs).
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That’s not why I say it, but I named it like this.
As for the musical side, yes, but I also add that it’s a kind of stand up, my concerts. I reveal myself quite internally there, I tell the stories of those songs and those relationships. I explain and throw down the poetic metaphors that occasionally appear in those songs by some chance. So I would add stand up to that.
Burlesque and the other genres I mentioned, including cabaret, are from the 1920s and 1930s, which is actually what your father, a well-known swinger, also does. And I thought to myself: that’s great, dad plays for the factory workers and you sing for the workers.
That’s great! In addition, in the factory, in the theater La Fabrika. (Laughs)
Is my comparison lame or not?
Actually no, you said it nicely. I’ve been like this ever since. I think it still has a certain sophistication – from what I hear from the reviews – of the first republic, but it’s probably more brutal, much more brutal. In the lyrics and in my speech between songs.
Where did the Latin American influences come from in her music? Why did her modeling career end? And how did you come up with the idea to come to the Angel in a Jute Bag awards ceremony? Listen to the full interview!
