Czechmatediary

On May 30th passed away Waldemar Matuska, one of the most prominent Czech/Slovak singers of the 60’s and 70’s. He was born in Kosice (Slovakia) and later raised in Prague. Inheriting music genes from his mom, Waldemar played various instruments from an early childhood. Later he became an actor in a famous Prague theatre Semafor. As his popularity increased he began writing songs for movies as well as doing the acting part in them. Matuska was a singing partner to many other Czech stars like Helena Vondrackova, Marta Kubisova or Jitka Zelenkova and he won the Zlaty Slavik competition twice. In 1986 he and his family decided to emigrate to the USA (namely to the state of Florida). The communists punished him by banning all of his songs, completely destroyed couple of his recordings as well as deleted his opening song in the popular television series Chalupari. He continued to perform in the US, mostly for the Czechoslovak emigrants. Matuska died of pneumonia and heart faliure at the age of 76.

Attached is a YouTube video of one of his former hits, a song called “Tereza”: (more…)

If you saw Pavel Ivancic walking in the streets of Prague you would see a normal, nice looking guy. But a little would you know, that he is carefully evaluating your current outfit and probably thinking that you had no style at all. Who is this clean-cut looking guy? Pavel has been actually voted the Czech fashion designer of 2007. He studied in London, worked in Paris, met the most prestigious designers in the world and now he has its own fashion brand called “Muset”. Radio Prague did an interview with him and  I was surprised to find out that Pavel things there is no fashion business in the Czech Republic. Supposedly there is not a single store that would sell Czech designer stuff! (more…)