Abstrakt
During the second half of the 1960s, Czechoslovakia underwent major changes in the cultural field. These also included so-called "beat music" (the term "rock" or "rock'n'roll" music was banned because of the Anglo-American connotations). During the "Prague spring" movement, the restrictions towards beat music -mostly that with English lyrics - were lifted and the genre attracted more audience as well as more musicians. Between 1966 and 1968, beat music was on its peak, with songs in English officially released and the genre even being supported by the socialist state.
Change occurred after the occupation by Soviet forces in 1968. Beat music as a genre was still played on the radio and at public venues, but with the new political culture came new oppressions. This time the problem was not only the language but also the lyrical themes of the newly created songs.
Even though the oppression of musicians in socialist Czechoslovakia have already been very well described (Bolton 2012; Hagen 2019; ...), I will focus on two very concrete and lesser known cases - the song "Sunny Grave" by Blue Effect and the album Odyssea by Atlantis. Sunny Grave could not be released with its original English lyrics in 1969 and, because of the change of political culture, it was not even possible to release it on the band's first album with new Czech lyrics. In the case of Odyssea, the regime ordered that the whole batch of the released records be destroyed because of incompliant themes and lyrics.
My goal in this paper is to show how much the perception of music and lyrics changed because of the state's repressive apparatus and how the artists negotiated with the regime under the circumstances of the given period.