While bluegrass cannot really be considered essentially Czech music, there is a lot about the American genre and style that has been absorbed and transformed in the Czech context. American interest in the Czech lands dates to the nineteenth century, when Bohemia and Moravia (and most of Central Europe) were provinces of the Austrian Empire. Writings about the United States reported to Czechs through journalistic and monographic reports by Jan Naprstek and others highlighted to exotic degrees the natural and cultural richness of "Amerika." (to use a the word that Praguer Franz Kafka used as the title of his 1927 [[Amerika[novel]|novel]]) Bluegrass music is considered a form of American roots music with its own roots in the English, Irish and Scottish traditional music of immigrants from the British Isles (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants of Appalachia), as well as the music of rural African-Americans, jazz, and blues. ... The traditional music of the Czech Republic has been well-documented as a result of the work of composers like Leoš Janáček, Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana, and Bohuslav Martinů, who recorded and utilized national sounds in their compositions. ... Bohemia For the place in the USA, see Bohemia, New York. ... Moravia (Czech: Morava, German: Mähren, Polish: Morawy, Hungarian: Morvaország, Dutch: Moravië) is the eastern part of the Czech Republic. ... Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire until 1867 and of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary until 1918. ...