… until now, the imaginary dangers of indifference and reluctance (and formerly courage) have yielded to freedom, and they have emerged, though rare, but still, exectioned individuals who have not missed the message of enthusiastic amateur rock (and Amalgam). There was a memorial CD with a recording of the 1978 concert (together with Švehlík), and as I gave out a few copies, the reactions arrived: It had to be a concert! Really super, you were really pioneers, it makes you feel the joy, just play and play it out of the reins, sing as a beak grow, calmly knock or walk. I love this. And music super. At that time, what tools and techniques did you have against today’s quality. The tabla added it, but especially for that time I understand that people were screaming. And I understand why you’ve been reeling the commies. This was a total explosion of freedom, a student wrote to me (which is not a coincidence that he is playing hard on the didgeridoo, the Tibetan bowls, the bamboo flute, and especially for regular playing, lured the whole party in Trutnov… because of that, unlike hundreds of other passive listeners, he discovered the true message of Amalgam: preserving the inner human freedom).
Besides, the almost archaeological excavations of various records, concerts and concepts (which were found in the form of three boxes of clippings, photos and typographical notes, choosed and prepared by Jaroslav Riedel a few years ago) revealed the meaning of my former writing on music (and the production of LP fictional covers, when the idea of a real LP was nonsensically naive). In other words, for forty years, I have been delighted to have a quiet private joy (from the playing rock music, and then the spiritual revolution, in the sense of John Cage, who, when he once wondered why he is doing music: because he helped social revolution. But after years he added: now I know that I am helping the revolution of the spiritual) of the opportunity to participate in both. And to connect inside and outside the inner and outer.
Meanwhile, I was quite surprised recently by an e-mail from Japanese enthusiast, who has been spreading jazz, improvisation and then alternative Czech music of the second half of the last century for twelve years by internet in the suburbs of Tokyo. At first she came across Jiří Stivin’s music twenty years ago. Then she got to Oldřich Janota and then she was surprised to find the Amalgam music… she sell rarity music in her shop (http://www.sheyeye.com/) in the town of Niigata. Last year she also broadcast with great acclaim CD Švehlík and Amalgam, Lucerna May 1978, and last week with a great deal of interest music called Silent Water. Macuko Ryota wrote me all about (I admit that it was an experience to hear my music after so many years).
On the same day the Amalgam set up, which took over the entire Švehlík. Amalgam, especially later, tended to Indian music, but here is still interwoven with the Zappa’s and Crimson’s approach. This is all the more interesting … wrote synchronically in the framework of the issue of several memorial albums journalist also the witness Josef Rauvolf. He had forgotten if he knew at all that I sometimes forced the youngsters (then from the Elektrobus group) who later played for example in the Švehlík group (and from the copied tapes, later on the cassettes) than they (some) King Crimson or Frank Zappa … and also advised them if they were willing to listen to me, not to drink and do not bother with stupidity, and rejoice (music) for life.
After all, likewise and also in the long run, I first used to give advice to my wife’s friends and then to musical colleguages (it took for twenty years before some of them started to write that they should listen to me). In other words, even to the musicians I played with, and to the women I lived with, I was almost as strenuous as to myself, but with the exception of the intensity of my engagement (in discipline, training, love, continual development I have always listened to (and bought on black stock) best music according to the rankings of Western musical magazines – Zappa, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, Brian Eno, and of course Beatles, Pink Floyd and King Crimson (second-class ensembles and musicians, including those Czech plays on Czech stations, I did not stay).
Even then, I also knew that (in the never ending and dangerous time of Biafra of the soul) I often overtake the time that I have to protect and cultivate internal freedom, and that I know that, in contrast, I go in the right (Buddhist, positive) direction: every failings strengthens me. I was already looking for and finding such jobs (from the beginning, I knew that I would never live with music or writing and it was good) that I could practice drums all day, learn languages, translate, and then tap the nights into the typewriter to prepare and issue samizdats. And I lately I lectured at the University of New Times (see photo) about other music, mantras and meditation. And that I stopped paying attention to parents and grandparents (and so-called teachers), as if they did not care for you… nine crafts, the tenth poverty… and what would people say… So I figured out and spread quite different, alternative positive passwords (it´s not yet so bad to be better, or genius makes mistakes, but the jerk is repeating, etc.) and taught patience of hurrying and non-waiting (for success, awards). I knew that if I did everything I did, for 100%, not for myself, but for others I would cultivate both myself and make silent ego.
I also knew that what I would not do, no one would do for me, my playing and living, and that it is important to do it not for mysem, but for others. On the one hand, that it is useless to comment on my music, let alone to explain it, but at the same time that I have to write in details about it (and about music I have been influenced by years) and to suggest contexts (from which I started and written my books and lead workshops). And then I was just humiliating, waiting for someone to come up with it (years ago, the enthusiast had built up practical proof of my Zen master’s assertion that the sound of music, in this case (see the photo) the background and real sound of the river Vydra spring, is a normal level, the non-sound of music is that, why it’s running here). I see, it took for forty years, but I did: almost all my dreams came true. Amalgam, the concept of a mixture of different ideas, traveled with life with me. And recordings forty years old show that music is better than words because it’s more accurate …
(translated for my japanese and dutch friends with a lot of help from Pavel Google, with a lot of my corrections)
