THE LOJZE SLAK STORY
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-day hunger strike, they realized they couldn't win and took me back. Perhaps
to blame for my stubbornness was Uncle's accordion, which I was already inspecting
and caressing hidden in the closet. Many times I stayed at home and treated myself
to a music lesson, pulling the bellows and experimenting with the instrument. Nobody
in the house was supposed to know because the accordion was my uncle's most precious
possession. But one day, I had to play for him. He patted me and allowed me to push
the buttons again sometimes. But then the war came," remembers Lojze with sadness.
Uncle Ludvik was taken to an internment camp and the Partisans borrowed the accordion
for a feast, not 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-part harmony,
and when I first heard Fanti s Praprotna, I knew they were what I had been wanting
and looking for for a long time. When I added the sound of the guitar, the baritone,
the clarinet, and, of course, my button box to their harmonic singing, a genuine
folk tone appeared," he says about the beginnings of today's Slak combination. Then
came the recordings, and their 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.
