TrutnOff Festival, Honouring Havel's Memory, Kicks Off in Trutnov — President Pavel Drops By

The TrutnOff music festival, dedicated to the memory of Czechia's first president Václav Havel, has kicked off in Trutnov. According to organisers, around eight thousand people turned out on the opening day, and among the guests was none other than the country's sitting president, Petr Pavel, who swung by the festival straight from his summer holiday.

Havel and the dissidents take the stage

Václav Havel's name is emblazoned on a large yellow banner right above the main stage. Beside it hangs a portrait of another symbol of the Czech dissident movement closely tied to the festival — Ivan "Magor" Jirous, nicknamed the Guru. Both men died in 2011, fifteen years ago now.

No one spoke of Havel from the stage more than the band Pražský výběr, through the voice of frontman Michael Kocáb, a longtime ally of the former president. He said the festival keeps alive the memory of a man the country's current political elite would rather forget. The band, one of Thursday's headline acts, played through its biggest hits — "Prahy," "Grébovka X," "Tatrman," "Na václavským václaváku" and others deeply tied to both 1980s Czechoslovak culture and the years right after 1989.

Backstage chatter suggested the band might finally unveil a new song in the coming months — their last album, "Vymlácení rockové palice," came out back in 2007 under the title Pražský výběr II, back when Michal Pavlíček and Vilém Čok were not yet part of the line-up.

The president among the crowd

Petr Pavel, keeping up this year's tradition of dropping in on summer music events, made his way to Trutnov straight from his holiday, according to the festival's chief organiser Martin Věchet. Backstage, the president discussed the festival's history with its organisers before heading out to the crowd, who greeted him with applause, cheers and gestures of support, eagerly snapping photos with him.

"Reminders of Václav Havel's legacy are scattered all across the festival grounds," Věchet said. "There are exhibitions, and in the Poetry Tent there are talks and lectures about him, along with two themed seminars — one of them on the illegal Czech-Polish meetings of dissidents in the Krkonoše mountains in the years before the revolution. Films about Havel will be shown as well."

The mood on stage remains spontaneous — any musician is free to speak their mind about Havel or the current political situation. During the set by Jasná páka, drummer David Koller condemned Russian aggression mid-song, during "Pal vocuď, hajzle." The concert itself doubled as a retrospective of the band's work and a tribute to its late founder, singer and guitarist Michal Ambrož, who passed away in October 2022.

A church service and a rock line-up

As tradition dictates, the festival opened with a church service, after which the band Krásné nové stroje — playing at the crossroads of rock and funk since 1982 — took to the stage. On the second stage, the Sbor břežanských kastrátů performed — an ensemble that started out as a one-off surprise for publisher Lubor Matys's birthday and has since grown into a fully-fledged multi-voice group, with Matys himself among its members. The rock outfit Hentai Corporation also played, and after midnight the line-up featured the band Visací zámek.

Friday's bill includes Gogol Bordello, Kurtizány z 25. avenue and Ondřej Havelka s Melody Makers. Saturday brings Lucie, Jamaica's The Wailers and Monkey Business to the stage, while Sunday closes things out with Skarface, Karel Kahovec s kapelou and Švihadlo. The festival wraps up in the small hours between Sunday and Monday.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz