Ivan “Magor” Jirous was one of the leading figures of the Czechoslovakian underground during the 1970s and 80s as a poet, theorist, organizer of happenings, and the artistic director of the avant-garde, psychedelic rock band the Plastic People of the Universe. Magor articulated a vision for the underground as an artist-led cultural self-determination movement. He believed that the underground represented a second culture, or parallel culture, where Czech artistic and intellectual expression could exist freely outside of the establishment, and in direct opposition to the communist regime. It was Magor and the Plastic People of the Universe that helped to bridge the divergent efforts of the Czech dissidents and the Charter 77 movement. Magor's role in the underground as a theorist should, in no way, eclipse his accomplishments as poet. In 1986 he received the Tom Stoppard Prize for Magor's Swan Songs, a collection of poems he wrote in the mid-1970s while imprisoned as a political dissident. He spent a total of nine years in prison for his art and ideas during the communist regime. Most recently, Magor received the 2006 Jaroslav Seifert Prize for literary achievement. Thee award, named for the only Czech author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, was first established by the Charter 77 Foundation in 1986 to recognize the literary talents of Czech writers who would not be honoured inside the communist bloc.
During their 2007 residency in the Czech Republic Postcommodity had the unique opportunity to collaborate with Ivan “Magor” Jirous -- Postcommodity on guitars, pedals and amplifiers and Magor reading new unpublished poetry. The recording Postcommodity + Magor documents this collaboration, which was the first of its kind between a Czech underground artist and American Indians. This event was produced to create a unique intersection of Czech and American Indian resistance. There were no filters, curators, editors, or producers. It was about the ephemeral opportunity within that specific time and place for artists from different hemispheres and generations to acknowledge their respective struggles against totalitarianism and colonialism, and explore the common ground of their experiences. The result was the realization of art as an accessible and achievable means of both cultural self-determination and cross-cultural exchange.
With a generous grant from the First Nations Composers Initiative Postcommodity was able to to produce a CD of the recording and book featuring Czech and English translations of the poems Magor read during the recording. Postcommodity is fortunate to be the first American publishers of this poetry in the English language. For most Americans, this document will be their first exposure to Magor’s work, which in spite of his cult following in the Czech Republic, is largely unknown in the United States. Magor has published numerous volumes of poetry in the Czech Republic, yet none of them are available in translation in America. The same is true for the vast majority of underground work from the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, it is our hope that this document, as brief as it may be, will contribute to the body of Czech underground work available here in America and expose new audiences to Magor’s work.
