Vladimír Merta: The Renaissance Legend with a New Album

Fifty-five years after the release of his debut Ballades de Prague, it does not make sense to list the history of the association of singer-songwriter Šafrán, for whom Immediately it belonged to Vlastimil Třešňák, Jaroslav Hutka or Zuzana Homolová. Without even telegraphically repeating the career of the creator, who was banned under communism, in November 1989 he played from Melantrich’s balcony on Wenceslas Square in Prague to hundreds of thousands of fans. campaign, after which he entered the Anděl Awards Hall of Fame in 2018.

For creators whose talents could be revealed on a journey as long and adventurous as Mert’s, there are still reasons to spin the narrative from the present moment. The latest is represented by an album called České sny – Nejisté ijstoty 1, which was released only by the Galén publishing house.

On it, Merta plays with the image of someone who can do a lot, but doesn’t need anything more. Fortunately, his latest work does not hint at possible sleep. When, after many visits with the lost text, it finally appeared in 2021 Garbage can be fresh, a kind of “blues talk” about how old disagreements, lovers, swaggers and eshebists settled after November, the judges of the Magnesia Litera prize chose the book as one of the best prose of the year. They said that Merta is funny, expressive and that she refuses to be a tobacconist of his own reputation.

Last month, the Vltava station was broadcasting what happened to him, who was with him she filmed writer Ivana Myšková. The temptation to build a monument to the singer as the “conscience of the country” was met by the author here with a bitter smile.

Like the likes of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, Vladimír Merta is more of a dance satirist, alchemist and demiurge than a man of the system. The master of reunion, who turns out to be a pessimist in the song Demagog, who is not on the side of the winners in the new conditions – and covid has also arrived. Or in the dumka A prisoner’s song in a Russian soldier about Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Merta does not lie to herself that the singer and songwriter in the Czech Republic today means more than the memory of the conspiratorial islands in the middle of communist chaos. It seems to be resolved because the man with the guitar no longer represents the artistic and moral promise as it was before. “I should serve my country, but I don’t feel like it,” he sings, adding “she doesn’t feel like it either. “

Even so, it may be difficult for him when his past as a singer becomes the subject of dealing with power. “If he was still here / they would have given the metal to Kryl / But now everyone will resist / and it will go against poor Nohavic,” he says sadly at an address the shepherd in the blues I Know It So Far.

Apparently, Mert’s displeasure was fueled by the willingness of singers Jaroslav Hutka and Václav Koubek from 2021 ride play for seniors on the Mayors and Pirates pre-election bus. He doesn’t feel resigned or particularly angry; with the new album, Merta reaffirms what he said that the craft of a songwriter lies in the way he deals with reality. That it is a talent to observe, and therefore interest in the world. A single detail can illuminate so much that the shadows extend beyond the horizon of shared space and time. And the only fear he admits on the record comes from the fact that he can’t think of anything new.

Mert’s novel Ashtray, radio memoirs and finally the album Česká sny all point to the same direction in different ways: to the shadow of the world and its most difficult part, which is coming to deals alone.

At the same time, the repetition is about a lot, maybe everything. Looking back on what we have done, we also necessarily think about what we could have done but didn’t. Merta picks up the right topic at the beginning of the album Old tapeswhen he notes that he “will no longer return unrecorded tapes”.

“I will not return the unrecorded tapes anymore,” sings Vladimír Merta right at the beginning of the recording in the composition Staré pásky. | Video: Galen

What happened can be recalled as a memory, as here in the tender love songs of Fifty Ways or It’s So Long Ago. What has not happened with eighty in sight will hardly happen. Small gaps in tuning and approximations in storytelling can be taken as part of the old master’s charm. Hand and voice may shake a little, but they are guided by the superiority of knowledge.

And one last time, we will mention today, Mert’s and us. Such a charming, linear and, in a good sense, touching song, like his Mávači, does not compare to modern works sung in Czech. In three and a half minutes, the non-continuous universes of several characters seem to collide, two Roma children on a highway bridge, huts tearing along the highway in search of Sunday peace, and a singer looking at his own poster the morning after a concert.

Perhaps this is what Merta means by writing songs as a grasp of reality. It is precisely this magic that makes music a work of art.

“Own and stolen / heard and heard,” he tries to describe himself on the album, and he whistles in a boyish way. The listener is very happy to be there when Merta plays with words and melodies.