We don"t usually consider bluegrass a politically subversive music, but under the communist regime of Czechoslovakia, bluegrass was a sound of resistance, records were circulated samizdat style, and musicians played under threat of imprisonment. With the advent of democracy, bluegrass and folk have flourished in Eastern Europe, with Druha Trava (in English, "Second Grass") at the fore. Their sound remains subversive: they work up Chick Corea, Bob Dylan, and Rolling Stones tunes with an ear for both jazz improvisation and Old World traditionalism. The five members are all virtuosos, having played bluegrass for some two decades, and if the idea of Czech voices harmonizing high and lonesome strikes you as implausible, it shouldn"t. This may not be "authentic" bluegrass, but it"s thrilling and inventive just the same. --Roy Kasten