The story
Dobrofest Trnava in Trnava
Dobrofest is an international music festival held in Trnava since 1992, dedicated to the memory of John Dopyera (1893-1988), the Slovak-American inventor of the resonator (dobro) guitar, drawing bluegrass, dobro, and roots musicians from Slovakia and abroad to the city each year for a multi-act program.
In the early twentieth century, a family of Slovak origin named Dopjera, later anglicized to Dopyera, emigrated to the United States, and one of the sons, John Dopyera, born in 1893, went on to invent the resonator guitar, an instrument that became a foundational sound of American bluegrass and roots music and is known generically today by the brand name dobro.