Grycová Vlasta: Ballads and Love Songs - CD

In Vlasta's family, singing was abundant and her mother Alžběta in particular excelled in song memory. The songbook, which she carried, as was once the custom, only in her head, was particularly extensive. It is full of ballads, love romances and apt dance pop songs. It also recalls the Turkish invasions and military events in the local basin. The young singer, living in a singing village and listening almost daily to her mother's songs, was discovered in the late 1950s during her wanderings through the Moravian-Slovakian borderlands by Jaroslav Staněk and Jaroslav Čech, a dulcimer player, and brought to Hradistan, where her feel for song presentation matured. After 1968, when the activities of Hradistan were restricted for political reasons, Vlasta and her husband Josef began to serve the folklore in Olšava in Uherské Brod, where the excellent tenor Luboš Málek was the principal. But by then Vlasta was already a mature enough singer to be noticed by the professional BROLN and she became one of its most prominent singing faces. There are dozens of musicians with whom she has collaborated. Today it would be hard to find a primate and a good singer who would not know her.

Vlasta Grycová was a folklore queen. At the same time, the queen is attractive in appearance, nature and song. When she sang lullabies, they exuded tenderness, her ballads were overwhelming with tension, until the viewer was holding his breath, in her wedding songs, she revealed in beautiful metaphors the sanctity of marriage and the hard fate of married women, romance charmed with grace, Christmas bells jingled in carols in her alto tremolo, to the peasant ones, she often added juicy humour alongside the rhythm. Vlasta was a singer who knew how to find a song for every occasion. And she was able to immerse herself in the songs in such a way that you could believe the stories she sang about. In her ballads she often wept over the misfortunes of people and sang about love as if she had been directly affected by it.

Reissue year 2023

Playlist

CD
Which bird sits under the maple tree / Dorna takes water / Matusek used to walk / Turks eat / In one valley / Straňanské svadební / Our Janice does nothing / From one side the wind blows / It rains rain / Ej, on the mountains on the valleys / If there were strawberries / On the Danube River / If there were such, how rich they are / What happened at Strání pri bráně / Níže Nové Zámkků / Jede Janko up the valley / Already the sun has set / Pod ňa moja milá / Na kohos Aničko / KOsí Jano / Těžko je ni, těžko