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Lojze Slak Story
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If we searched the world for the best known person from Dolenjska, it would definitely
be Lojze Slak. Thirty years have passed this year since he first began entertaining
audiences with his trio
of musicians and Fanti s Praprotna (The Boys from Praprotno).
Even in the smallest village he attracts young and old, and he is equally well known
to our immigrants in America and Australia as he is to the people of Gorenjska, Štajerska,
Primorska, and his own Dolenjska. He is the only one to have played the "frajtonarica"
or button accordion at the world center of country music in Nashville, Disneyland
in Florida, and in many other places. The Slak Ensemble is definitely the most successful:
more than four hundred of his songs have been published and they have sold three
million records, not to mention cassettes, CD's, and other material. As the first
such group, they will celebrate their thirtieth anniversary on June 4th in the large
hall of the Cankarjev dom Cultural Center in Ljubljana. On this occasion, Helidon
records will present him with a diamond record. Lojze has never denied his roots,
although he liked to say that he was from Mirna pee even though he was born in Jordankal,
hidden a few kilometers away below the forested Mount Golobinjek. Lojze never considered
this little village, where ten children were born to the Slak family, to be his own.
His paradise was Mali Kal, where he spent a happy childhood with his grandmother
and his Uncle Ludvik. "They tried to get me home once when I was three, but I resisted
with might and main. After a three-
returning it until the end of the war. Uncle
Ludvik and the button box returned home, and the growing Lojze played at his first
wedding; the guests filled his hat with his first coins and at fourteen he bought
his first accordion. "Even in those times, I was stubborn enough to play my
own music.
My idols were Uncle Ludvik and Franc Potočar, the best known Dolenjska musician of
the time. The first played well with his right hand and Potocar was excellent on
the bass notes. I united their playing styles and created my own way of playing which
opened the road for this much despised instrument to records and cassettes," says
Lojze, not forgetting to mention the decisive year of 1958 when during his first
public appearance as "a young man from below Trška gora" as he was then called on
the radio program Pokaži, kaj znaš (Show What You Can Do), he set the entire hall
on its feet and won. "Slak was the first Slovene to start playing the diatonic accordion
the right way; that's why he succeeded," wrote the late Lev Ponikvar. Lojze never
played from musical scores but rather felt the music which grew through his heart
to his hands and the buttons. He himself realized that the button box lacked something
and that he would never be able to play it the way he wanted to. It is no wonder
then that for a few years he took up the chromatic accordion. Nevertheless, he returned
to the wooden diatonic "box" and suggested that its makers install the additional
button which even today is called the "Slak button." The first Slak Ensemble was
composed of four Slak brothers. Matija played the clarinet, Stane the bass, Tone
the trumpet, and Lojze pulled the accordion. In turn, Tone and Matija were called
up for their army service, but the group was well established by them and was invited
to play for various occasions. They were then joined by Niko Zlobko, and in 1961
the quintet made their first radio recording of "Mirnopeška polka" (The Mirna Peč
Polka). In 1964, the serious work really started. "I wanted to be different from
Avsenik, so that people needn't wonder whose music they were listening to. I was
impressed by men singing four-
first record album
Kadar pa mim hišče grem (Whenever I Go by the Little House) sold 100,000
copies. In
1967 they made their first television broadcast from Trška gora, where Lojze later
found the peace and space to create new melodies and songs.
