SONGY A BALADY.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: MUSIC - Marta Kubisova

In the late 1960s, every country had at least one: a cute singer/actress, mid-20s, go-go boots, hair piled high, black eyeliner, radiating youthful independence. The main difference with Czechoslovakia's leading prototype, Marta Kubisova, is that her government soon banished her entirely from public life.

Kubisova was the "it" girl of the Prague Spring, that snowballing 1964-1968 cultural and eventually political thaw of communist frigidity, eventually stomped out in August 1968 by the invading Warsaw Pact. Overnight, Kubisova's sorrowful ballad "Modlitba pro Martu" ("A Prayer for Marta") was transformed from sappy tear-jerker to theme song of the resistance.

It took until early 1970 for the recrudescent communist government to totalize its grip on all facets of Czechoslovak life. Kubisova was rung up on false charges of pornography, her band banned from performing, her 1969 release Songy a Balady (Songs and Ballads') yanked from shelves. It would not reappear until after the 1989 Velvet Revolution overthrew communism.

Kubisova did not go...