Iva Škrovová

* 1962

  • “In fact, he hated those times, the general atmosphere. Those times when we were denied freedom. And he was such a free spirit himself; and it's a fact that music knows no boundaries. It's a universal language he had been able to navigate and live through; so it was something quite contradictory. He hated those times. But like I said before, he would be feeding on himself, on this joy of his and also this resistance of sorts. He didn't seem bitter, he didn't allow bitterness to settle inside him. He felt wronged, as they would just silence him, at the time he was flying high, like in his 40ies, from his fortieth birthday on, when he matured as a human being and as an artist, with all those possibilities opened and energy to spare.”

  • “The radio would give him some contracts from time to time, as in fact there were not many people they could use. After they fired both my father and Věra Šejvlová, they had no one to replace them. Then Jan Rokyta started working there. And he would help my father, as he would let him do those arrangements. He wanted him to resume recording and collecting those songs. So in the end, my father would get back in and he would resume his work. You could say he was working incognito in a way. As his name didn't appear anywhere. His name couldn't show up under those arrangements he made or the songs he collected. Only later he started using a pseudonym. But that happened only after some time. He started going under the name of Ladislav Mistrík.”

  • “In 1968, the Soviets came and after that this whole mess started. It went for quite a long time and he also had been hiding for some time, till December maybe, and after that, he would quickly relocate to Olomouc, where he would be less exposed, and work as the director of the local philharmonic. And then those political screenings started. As there was always a delay. Then they started to investigate who did what, to what extent he was involved and everything, how big was his participation in this and that. So in the end, this development could reach him even there and in 1971 he was fired from the philharmonic. And they stated quite openly that he was being watched quite thoroughly, so it would be pointless for him to apply for any job, as any request by him would be dismissed; that was in 1971. After that, the most difficult years started, both for him and our family, as he had been in fact banned from the radio. They couldn't play compositions he wrote, not even the folk pieces, if they would play them at all, they couldn't use his name, so he was almost without income those days.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Ostrava, 18.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:27:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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My father hated those times, but he never succumbed to bitterness. He managed to sustain himself from the joy he had

Iva Škrovová, née Dadáková - a graduation photo, 1981
Iva Škrovová, née Dadáková - a graduation photo, 1981
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Iva Škrovová was born on 28 February 1962 in Ostrava, where she also attended grammar school. In the interview she spoke mostly about her father, an important Czech folklorist, conductor and composer Jaromír Dadák. He was born on 30 May 1930 in Znojmo, where he spent his early childhood. He started attending school in Vsetín where his father moved due to his new job. Jaromír Dadák‘s musical talent started showing up at grammar school, at that time, advised by his teacher, he started writing down folk songs of the Wallachia Region. Then he studied conducting at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (JAMU). During his studies, he co-founded the Radio Brno Folk Instrument Orchestra and served as its conductor. In the 1950s, he was the director of the Vít Nejedlý‘s Army Ensemble (AUS). During political screenings he volunteered for the work at a uranium mine. Upon his return, he was working as an editor at the Czechoslovak Radio‘s folk music department in Ostrava. From 1969, he was the director of the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc. After 1971 he was fired and couldn‘t work in his profession. From 1983 to 1993 he was living in Bratislava. After the Velvet Revolution he was doing dramaturgy for the Days of Contemporary Music, a festival in Prague. He passed away in Prague on 27 December 2019.