Czech Folklore Evening

Czech Ambassador Josef Rychtar, Jeroným Toloch, Tomáš Truneček,
Jan Ondera, Jan Toloch, Jiří Toloch, Vojta Klein, Jiří Návrat

Featuring:

Kubalovci

     Jiří Návrat, first violin

     Jan Ondera, double bass

     Tomáš Truneček, viola

     Jan Toloch, cimbalom

     Vojta Klein, violin

     Jiří Toloch, violin

     Jeroným Toloch, violin

The Bohemian Rhapsody in the Philippines, celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of the Czech-Philippine diplomatic relations continued at the Dusit Thani Manila with Czech Folklore Evening. This concert featured the Czech folk group Kubalovci composed of violinists Jiří Návrat, Vojta Klein, Jiří Toloch, Jeroným Toloch, violist Tomáš Truneček, double bassist Jan Ondera and cimbalom player Jan Toloch.

Despite the concert being held on a Monday night, audience turnout was still very impressive. It helped that this event, presented by the Czech Embassy in Manila, Travelife Magazine and Dusit Thani Manila, was a free one. And it didn’t hurt at all that the seven members of Kubalovci were blessed with good looks as well. This probably explained the presence of a number of young women in the audience on that night.

Unlike the Night in the Opera by Czech soprano Noema Erba the night before that had very familiar arias from various Italian operas, this concert by Kubalovci featured Czech folk songs specifically from Silesia, South Moravia along with those from other regions in Eastern Europe. In other words, they were songs that are unheard of in this side of the planet. It’s safe to say that only the Czechs in the audience, like Noema who joined the group in one number, knew the songs performed by the guys that night. Fortunately, cimbalom player Jan Toloch gave a brief explanation to some of the songs before they performed them. Good thing that he did that since almost all of the songs were in Czech which meant that a lot of people didn’t understand the lyrics at all. If not for Jan’s brief annotations, I wouldn’t have believed that one of the songs was about going off to fight in the war (a grim prospect) since the tunes had some jolly melodies, were so danceable and upbeat that I actually craved for some beer while listening to them. I found it very interesting how Tomáš Truneček played his viola sideways very much unlike how one plays it at an orchestra. He explained that this manner of playing the viola is common in Czech folk music and that it actually sort of mimics the playing position of the double bass.

Jan Ondera teaches RAd how to play the cimbalom

As always, the encores were among the highlights of the evening. The locals highly appreciated Kubalovci’s rendition of popular Philippine folk song Bahay Kubo and Freddie Aguilar’s signature song Anak which is one of the Philippines’ most popular songs ever. They followed these up with Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy and Heaven is a Wonderful Place with altered lyrics like Manila replacing heaven.

The cimbalom

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kubalovci for the first time around a week before the concert. It was amusing to recall that I initially thought that they couldn’t speak nor understand English at all and that we communicated through sign language at first. I met them again during Noema Erba’s concert so by the time of their concert, I already knew each member’s names by heart. I think that this familiarity provided me the opportunity to try out the cimbalom after the performance with Jan Toloch explaining to me how the instrument works. The cimbalom looks like a small rectangular grand piano without a keyboard and the hammers that hit the strings enabling the piano to produce a sound. Instead, to produce a sound with the cimbalom, one has to press a pedal below and strike the strings using a pair of beaters. It was very confusing to figure out how to play it since the strings are placed horizontally along the width of the cimbalom and the pitch actually changes from left to right within the same string. I asked Jan to play a major and a minor scale and I wasn’t able to discern a pattern to it. After that, I just started to strike random strings, tried to figure out the intervals and basically got myself the feel of the instrument.

Jiří Toloch, Jiří Návrat, Tomáš Truneček, Jeroným Toloch, Jan Ondera, 
Vojta Klein, Jan Toloch,

Czech Folklore Evening was presented by the Czech Embassy in Manila, Travelife Magazine and Dusit Thani Manila. Special thanks go out to Ambassador Josef Rychtar and Consul Jakub Černý.