Czech Music Three generations of a Prague musical family talk to Radio Prague
The years of German occupation and decades of communist rule that followed have given music a very special role in Czech society. Amid censorship and political manipulation, music became an important and often subversive tool of free expression. The Doruzka family in many ways embodies this unusual history. The broadcaster and writer Lubomir Doruzka was born in 1924, and has been writing about jazz for well over sixty years. He still broadcasts regularly on the subject. His son Petr, born in 1949, has continued the tradition. He grew up listening to the underground bands of the sixties, and today he is the Czech Republic’s foremost expert on “world music”, well known to Radio Prague listeners through his regular feature “Magic Carpet”. Petr’s son David, born in 1980, has returned to jazz and has been lauded as one of the Czech Republic’s top jazz guitarists. A few days ago I went to visit the three Doruzkas at the family’s house on the southern outskirts of Prague, and we talked about their lives and music.
Petr Doruzka
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