About

Who we are

We are Harafica, a cimbalom band from Uherské Hradiště. We play songs from the Dolňácko around Uherské Hradiště, from Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, along with our own writing and film music – on cimbalom, violins, violas, clarinet and double bass, and for some programmes with drums and bass guitar. Most of us have played together since childhood, when we met at the school of arts in Uherské Hradiště.

How it began

In 1999, music teacher Pavel Štulír put together yet another children’s cimbalom band at the school of arts in Uherské Hradiště. After its first year it won the cimbalom band showcase in Mikulov, in 2003 the national competition in Vysoké Mýto, and in 2005, when it left the school, it took the name Harafica. In the Dolňácko, a harafica is one of the lowest underskirts of a woman’s folk costume – there is even a song about them coming loose under a cherry tree – while in the Wallachian hills it is the state a person is in the morning after a very good party. We found ourselves in both meanings.

Since then the line-up has barely changed. Our first violinist is Martin Melichárek; our artistic director is cimbalom player Petr Gablas, who writes most of our arrange­ments.

Where to find us

These days we mostly play concerts, festivals and cel­e­bra­tions – among them the Slovácko Wine Festival, the Summer Film School and the Smetana’s Litomyšl festival. But we have never stopped playing in clubs either. We play at balls, weddings, village feasts, and at corporate and other private events. Abroad we have played in Spain, France, Germany, Croatia, Poland and the United States, among others. With the Slovácko Theatre we spent years performing a joint show with its actors, and in 2025 we played at its eightieth birthday cel­e­bra­tions. We perform with the singers Kristýna Daňhelová, Lucie Šustek Rybnikářová and Tomáš Koláček so often that they are all but members of the band.

Recordings

We have made four albums. Harafica (2010) and Harafica II (2014) are our signature, purely folk albums and the best cross-section of what we play. Harafica Symphonic (2020) was made with the Janáček Phil­har­mon­ic Ostrava. Vánoční příběhy – Christmas Stories (2023) is an illustrated songbook with a CD, on which fifteen guests sing or narrate alongside our regular soloists. In 2016 we made an animated video for Cigánova smola and took it to the clubs on our “Harafica Plays Jackson” tour. Out of that later grew the #Harafi­ca­Tour concert series, which in 2018, 2019 and 2022 filled rock clubs from Metro and Fléda in Brno through La Fabrika and Mal­ostran­ská beseda in Prague to the Klub Mír back home.

Petr Gablas

The cimbalom player Petr Gablas has been our artistic director since 2005. He chooses what we play and writes most of our arrange­ments. He came to music at five, on the accordion, and a year later began the cimbalom with Ľudovít Daniel. He studied the cimbalom at the Brno Con­ser­va­to­ry with Dalibor Štrunc and then music direction at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He teaches at an art school and at the con­ser­va­to­ry in Brno. Outside Harafica he plays across genres – with the Brno City Theatre, the Radost Theatre, the Leipzig Opera, Opera Diversa, the Ondráš ensemble and BROLN – and he has recorded with soloists such as Vlasta Rédl, Naďa Urbánková, Dalibor Bárta and Jiří Procházka. Harafica Symphonic was his idea as well.

With an orchestra

Harafica Symphonic was Petr Gablas’s idea in 2016–2017: take folk songs from the Sušil and Bartoš collections, add Janáček and Bartók, and put a full symphony orchestra behind a cimbalom band. The premiere in Uherské Hradiště sold out twelve minutes after tickets went on sale. Since then the project has opened the Days of Czech and German Culture in Dresden, we have recorded it with the Janáček Phil­har­mon­ic Ostrava, and we have performed it with the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in Mariánské Lázně, with the Moravian Phil­har­mon­ic Olomouc at the Reduta and at the Janáček festival in Hukvaldy, with the Hradec Králové Phil­har­mon­ic in its home hall, and with the Bohuslav Martinů Phil­har­mon­ic at the congress centre in Zlín, in Luhačovice and, most recently, in the summer of 2026 in the open air at the Baťa Institute 14|15.

Across the ocean

We have flown to America three times. The first time was in February 2022, as one of the first Czech bands to tour the United States after Covid: Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Washington, Philadel­phia and New York twice, including the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan. Petr’s cimbalom stayed behind at the Czech museum in Cedar Rapids, so that the children of Czech Americans could learn on it. The second time was in late November and early December 2023, with a Christmas programme – through Miami, Orlando, Atlanta and Washington to New York, where we launched Christmas Stories under the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. And the third time, at the turn of February and March 2026, was to Texas – from Houston by way of the Czech and Slovak ball in Austin to a town called Moravia. Most people there no longer speak Czech, but the communities hold together and proudly claim their Moravian roots, even after several generations in America. We brought them the songs their great-great-grand­par­ents once carried away from home, and played them back to them.

On the threshold of Christmas

In recent years we have spent December touring with a programme called Na prahu Vánoc – On the Threshold of Christmas. The first half of the evening belongs to the songs we play all year round, the second to carols and to stillness. It has taken us to the Rudolfinum, to the Besední dům in Brno and to village halls all over the country – in Hluk, Jalubí, Ždánice, Doudleby nad Orlicí and Kostelec nad Labem, among others.