Karolína Kamberská

“Music is not the purpose of my life. It is one of my lifetime hobbies, just like food, instructing children or lying around after Sunday lunch. I’m just terribly lucky that this hobby is something that interests other people as well, so I can tour clubs and play my songs,” says Karolína Kamberská. Her everyday life of the mother of three children in a rural house in Brdy really doesn’t have so much in common with music. But that is exactly why many people find something in her songs, something that resonates with them and the music critics praise her sincerity of her cheeky testimony about life.

Although Karolína wrote her first songs as a child, her way to music world was quite long.  She never counted with the fact that this hobby would become her profession and so she studied political science. Soon she found out that she doesn’t want to deal with politics all her life. “I don’t have nerves for that,” she says laconically. While studying she played her songs with rock bands in her hometown of Děčín, after that she got married, gave birth to first two children and put the guitar down to guitar case. She moved to an old rural house with her husband Petr. There she took the “traditional female role” and she was more interested in growing tomatoes and baking pies than in events on the music scene.  

“The drawer was filled so much that the songs wanted out.” When her sister and musical cooperator Lucie Steinhauserová was visiting, slowly the duo Sestry Steinovy (The Stein Sisters) was formed. In ten years of their existence they released 4 CD’s with the company Indies, they toured hundreds of clubs and festivals in the Czech Republic and abroad, snatched several awards (including the 4th best European album in 2004 according to German portal folkwold.de and a nomination to Anděl Award in 2006) and for a long time they enjoyed the favor of music critics. “It was a beautiful time, but bit by bit we felt that the existence of conjoined twins wasn’t pleasant to us anymore because each of us is different and we want to do things on our own,” explains Karolína the cause of break-up of the Sestry Steinovy duo in 2009.

A year later, in fall of 2010, Karolína Kamberská releases a CD of new author songs called Hořkosladce which had again very favorable reception by critics and audiences and was placed at the forefront of several annual rankings, e.g. in the most visited music site called Musicserver. Today, Karolína is juggling touring and caring of her youngest son Matouš, and according to her words, “she is resting combining the two”.  

Karolína participated as a singer on albums of Václav Koubek, Jan Burian, Jablkoň or Israeli composer Effi Shoshani whose interpretation of the song Ej lásko, sung by Karolína, became a central song of the American film called Madison.  

After releasing the album Hořkosladce, the songwriter begun to prepare a collection of children’s songs for which the inspiration was her watching of her youngest son. Since the spring of this year she also performs for children’s audience and she doesn’t hide the excitement over this new direction of her musical journey. “I have never expected that I would start writing children’s songs, but it came to me as a total craze.” The album for children will be released in September  2011 under the name of Říkadla a křikadla.