Sunday Music Show | All stories

Today’s Sunday Music Show is dedicated to the very first and undoubtedly the most popular Czech musical Starci na chmelu or The Hop Pickers. The film, also known in English as The Hop Side Story, was directed by Ladislav Rychman in 1964 and has become something of a cult classic. The songs, composed by Vlastimil Hála, Jiří Malásek and Jiří Bažant, remain popular to this day.

Today’s Sunday Music Show looks at Wabi Daněk, the legendary Czech folk and country singer, who has teamed up with a group of young musicians in a project called Ďáblovo stádo or The Devil’s Flock. To this day, they have released two albums of the best known folk and country songs, giving them a fresh, contemporary twist.

This week Radio Prague’ s Sunday Music Show is devoted to the Czech singer and song writer, poet and translator Jiří Dědeček. His songs about love, death and the world around him reflect his innermost feelings, but they always come with a surprising twist.

In this edition of the Sunday Music Show, we focus on songs about "the weather" by popular bands and performers including Ewa Farná, Bohouš Josef and Burma Jones, Kryštof, Ready Kirken and more.

Mezi Lopatky, the third LP from Prague group Kieslowski, was one of the most acclaimed local indie releases of 2014. Duo Marie Kieslowski and David Pomahač describe themselves as “urban folk” and “amplified acoustic”, though their downtempo sound and intimate, relationship-exploring lyrics will no doubt put some in mind of England’s the XX.

This week’s edition of the Sunday Music Show focuses on an up-and-coming Czech band called Wild Tides. The surf-punk trio from Prague is the fresh winner of Czeching, a competition for promising Czech musicians organized by Czech Radio. Its aim is to launch one talented Czech band a year onto the world.

Formed by Englishman Colin Stuart, Colorfactory featured several Czech musicians who in their own right shaped the local music scene in the 1990s. Two of the latter starred in the 1996 movie Šeptej (Whisper) and it was Colorfactory’s contribution of several gentle, guitar-based songs to the film’s soundtrack that made the group firm favourites with Czech music fans.

Luboš Andršt is a Czech blues, jazz and art-rock guitarist. In a career spanning close to half a century he has produced over a dozen solo albums, collaborated with leading music ensembles and played with the likes of Paul Jones, Dan Gillespie Katie Webster and B.B. King.

This edition of Sunday Music Show is dedicated to the songs of the legendary protest singer Karel Kryl, interpreted by some of the best known Czech musicians, such as Markéta Irglová, Aneta Langerová or Tomáš Klus. The album Karel Kryl 70 is a live recording of a concert which took place in Prague’s Lucerna Music Hall this April to mark two important anniversaries related to the legendary protest singer - 70 years since his birth and 20 years since his death.

Led by singer-guitarist Ondřej Krochmalný, the Český Těšín-based band Planety received the Best New Act gong at the 2012 Vinyl awards for their debut LP Peklo, peklo, ráj. This year the indie outfit – influenced by the likes of Pixies, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine – returned with the positively received Nekonečná hudba města zapomeneš.