Ryvola Wabi: Letokruhy - CD

This year's double anniversary of Jiří 'Wabi' Ryvola's birth (1935) and death (1995) was certainly the impetus for this compilation. Equally important, however, was the desire to once again highlight the significant way in which he influenced our entire tramping and, more broadly, folk music scene. This retrospective mainly contains recordings from his 1990 solo album, *Můj názor na věc* (My Opinion on the Matter). Compiler Pavel Víšek has also added tracks recorded after Hoboes split, with the groups Pacifik and Bárka, or under the banner of Wabi Ryvola and Friends. To bring the total to twenty-nine, he has included *Proklatá fordka*, *Hobo*, *Tereza*, and *Hejno vran*, one of the songwriter's oldest compositions. The selection thus offers recordings that capture Ryvola's creative potential from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, representing about a tenth of his life's output of two hundred and eighty songs.

Careful work on the sound is enhanced by a booklet featuring text by Jiří Černý and a charmingly personal recollection from his younger brother, Mirko 'Miki' Ryvola. In it, you'll find many insights that wonderfully complement listening to these long-beloved songs, which liberated tramping music from its First Republic sentimentality and paved the way for artists like Wabi Daněk, Pavel 'Žalman' Lohonka, and Jan Nedvěd. To be able to write such authentically earthy, raw, and nostalgic songs, Ryvola certainly had the necessary life experience: expulsion from grammar school after February 1948, military service with the 'Black Barons', work as a miner at the Nosek mine, a boiler room job at Motol hospital, and a bohemian lifestyle.

On the cover photograph of the new CD, Wabi Ryvola is shown in his most typical guise, with a not-so-well-groomed full beard and a denim cap. Without any attempt at stylisation, he became a symbol. Without the major media support often enjoyed even by his stylistic peers, he transformed sixty years of life and forty years of composing and performing into an eternity. You are now holding a small piece of it.

Growth Rings: Twenty-nine solo songs by Wabi Ryvola!

Contents: Hejno vran (A Flock of Crows) Island Hobo Hobo a pes (Hobo and a Dog) Samota (Loneliness) Dálka (The Distance) Dlouhá cesta (The Long Journey) Bejt starej chlap (To Be an Old Guy) Můj názor na věc (My Opinion on the Matter) Šestačtyřicátej (The Forty-Sixth) Věřím (I Believe) Všední den (An Ordinary Day) Vracím se, vracím (I'm Coming Back, Coming Back) Loudavý návraty (Slow Returns) Tereza (Osamělý město) (Tereza (Lonely Town)) Jsem nejkrásnější (I'm the Most Beautiful) Zvláštní znamení woodcraft (Special Sign: Woodcraft) Přehlídka ztracenýho času (A Parade of Lost Time) Podivnej weekend (A Strange Weekend) 24 Obyčejný pondělí (Ordinary Monday) Letokruhy (Growth Rings) Song nočního nábřeží (Song of the Night Embankment) Slet divnejch ptáků (A Gathering of Strange Birds) Máš chuť evergreenů (You're in the Mood for Evergreens) Čas odjezdů (Time of Departures)