Jiřina Bohdalová

Pohádky is a Czech-language audio storytelling genre centered on narrated fairy tales and children’s radio plays. It blends expressive narration with character voices, simple songs, and richly scored incidental music, often punctuated by whimsical foley and sound design. Rooted in Czech folk motifs (clever farm boys, water sprites, dragons, wise grandmothers) as well as literary tales, pohádky were popularized through public radio, theater-trained actors, and later mass-market LPs and cassettes. The result is a warm, immersive format intended for family and bedtime listening, combining the intimacy of spoken word with the cinematic sweep of orchestral cues. While inherently local in language and folklore, the style is part of the wider Central European tradition of radio drama for children and stands at the crossroads of spoken word, classical scoring, and pedagogical children’s culture.

Mluvené slovo (literally “spoken word” in Czech) is a Czech-language umbrella genre for recorded and broadcast speech-based performance: literary readings, radio plays, monologues, essays, storytelling, cabaret sketches, satirical dialogues, and author recitations. It prioritizes diction, timbre, pacing, and interpretive acting over melody or groove. Music and sound design appear as supportive elements—stings, leitmotifs, scene-setting ambiences, or comedic punctuations—rather than as the focus. Historically tied to Czech broadcasting and theatrical traditions, mluvené slovo has lived on radio, vinyl/cassette/CD releases, and today in audiobooks and podcast-like formats. Because it spans literature, theatre, and journalism, the repertoire ranges from fairy-tale narration and classic prose to satirical commentaries, documentary features, and intimate authorial reflections.