Czech Folk Music

Czech folk music covers the traditional song and dance culture of Bohemia and the Czech lands as a whole: village fiddle and bagpipe bands, the Strakonice bagpipe tradition, brass dechovka in the south, and one of Europe's richest collected song repertoires, documented from the early nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the tradition fed two distinct heirs — the tramping song movement of the interwar years, which made folk-style singing the soundtrack of Czech outdoor life, and the folk ensembles and singer-songwriters of the Communist era, for whom *Karel Kryl* made the old ballad voice a vehicle of dissent.