The combination of modern jazz with tramp songs is insane at first glance or – as Vilém Spilka likes to say – a piece with a "Cimrman element". In reality, however, Spilka's new album Podvod (Deception) with adaptations of Honza Nedvěd's songs is a surprising but, in terms of musical tradition, a perfectly understandable project.
When tramp songs began to develop as a genre, they also covered a number of elements of the then popular music, including the up-and-coming jazz. After all, Jarka Mottl, author of a number of first-republic tramp songs, wrote for swing singers Oldřich Kovář and Věra Vincíková at the same time. The second wave of Czech tramp songs, so-called modern tramp songs, represented in the 1960s by the Ryvola brothers and Kapitán Kid took swing and jazz harmony as one of its foundations. In 1998, Kapitán Kid recorded an excellent Dixieland album Zpověď unaveného clowna/Confession of a Tired Clown (in collaboration with Jiří Suchý), and the latest album of Miki Ryvola Tunel jménem čas/Tunnel Called Time (2016) combines well-known tramp hits with the accompaniment of a chamber jazz orchestra. Yes, it is true that in the meantime jazz stepped much farther away from the Dixieland and swing era and that the complexity of the current version of the genre is much closer to artificial music than pop music, dance or tramp songs. But jazz instrumentalists still reach for songs and are inspired by their melodies, transform their harmony or rhythm and build their music based on songs. A large part of jazz standards came from musical or film songs and today it is completely normal that jazz artists reach for songs by Beatles, Radiohead, Nirvana or (for example, Jaromír Honzák) Abba with its simple pop style. So why not take the notorious melodies of Jan Nedvěd as the basis of the "modern jazz standard". They are so widely known that even after they were arranged for saxophone by Radek Zapadlo, my 15-year-old son without much music knowledge shouts: "That is Stánky!"
Vilém Spilka recognises Jan Nedvěd as a strong melody expert and he built his album on Nedvěd‘s melodies. At the same time, he successfully avoided both extreme solutions that were so obvious. He did not record a "romantic Nedvěd"-style album (an album where the band with romantic solo saxophone would be sentimentally playing songs without any changes) but his project is also very far from a Cubist or Dadaist deconstruction of Nedvěd, where the listener would have to look for individual tones and "syllables" of the original sung passages across the songs. The result of Spilka's thoughtful work are seven-minute songs (on average), in which a well-known melody is introduced – or more so replayed – in the form of introduction and then the individual musicians play the prescribed variations or improvise. Thus work usual and – if it were not for the seemingly unusual source material – completely common for jazz.
Although the outlined scheme can be found in all eight compositions with smaller or larger reservations, there are obviously major differences between them. The concepts of the two greatest hits on the album, the opening Podvod and closing Stánky, are also different. While "One of your eyelashes in palm..." begins with a casual preluding of Spilka's guitar, which is followed by Zapadlo's saxophone in the chorus, and only then come the variations, the band starts to build up Stánky with a saxophone solo only after several times of the rhythmic pattern, which remains present with slight variations throughout the song and forms the basis for harmony. This approach is also slightly used in the adaptation of Růže z papíru, which opens with the contrabass of Vlastimil Trllo, and again only then the familiar melody starts to gradually emerge. Similarly as in Podvod, even here Zapadlo and Spilka share the role of storytellers of the originally sung passages. Vilém Spilka conceived Ptáčata, a song just a little less known than the previously mentioned ones ("You know, girls have a harder life..."), as an almost ambient lament - long, slow, with a decomposition of drums.
Playing with tempo and rhythm is actually one of the most interesting moments of the entire album. It is not just that Tulácké ráno quite naturally became something like a waltz or that Růže z papíru are as though playfully propelled forward by the odd metre. The drums of Martin Kleibl are the least natural instrument of the Quartet for Nedvěd's songs (if we say that saxophone substitutes for the human voice), but their role in the overall tone of the album is priceless.
It is clear from the album itself as well as from the concert performance (the launch took place on 13 November at Šelepka) that the whole band really enjoys this Cimrman-style project. The graphic design of the album is also witty indeed – many beautiful black and white photographs of Roman Franc on the theme "jazz musicians dressed as tramps on Oslavka". Many people have tried to come up with a parody of Honza Nedvěd - ranging from Vlasta Redl and Neřež, the great songs by Wabi Daněk and Marek Eben to Mucha. But Vilém Spilka managed to build a new solid work based on these compositions which is among the best of what was released on the Czech jazz scene this year.
Vilém Spilka Quartet: Podvod; label: Indies Happy Trails 2016. 8 tracks, overall time: 52:57
