Music meant a lot to me
Jiří Dohnal was born on March 26, 1969 in Valašské Meziříčí, where he spent his entire childhood and adolescence. Although he remembers his childhood in totality as a gray period, this period also had its bright sides. Jiří regularly attended the pioneer section in Valašské Meziříčí, which was the only independent section in the entire republic and since 1968, the year of its foundation, he successfully resisted efforts for abolishment. For Jiří, this section was, as he says, a salvation. His other escape from reality was rock climbing and music. He attended the Folk Art School for eight years and learned to play the saxophone, violin, mandolin and banjo. Thanks to his talent, at the age of fifteen he got a job in the underground band Slepé střevo, which was the predecessor of the famous band Mňága a Žďorp. Although he did not personally participate in the demonstration on Národní třída in 1989, he was greatly affected by this event. As a student of the Pedagogical Faculty of the Palacký University in Olomouc, he actively participated in the student strike. After the Velvet Revolution, he was one of the first employees of the non-governmental organization Hnutí Duha, thanks to which he met Václav Havel. In 2022, he was engaged in coaching and also worked as a psychotherapist.