My life Bisera Veletanlić, solo vocalist, jazz singer

A seamstress made me a new bathing suit. In that same Zaostrog, at the same time, my sister was also having her summer holiday. On one occasion, my mother and I sat on the shore and watched Senka surrounded by friends, she was beautiful. The boys were teased her and at one point pushed her from the jetty into the water. I ran, leapt over the jetty and jumped in to save my sister, who actually knew how to swim. But I didn’t know how to swim. I slammed into the water like a stone, sank to the bottom and floated back to the surface. And that was how I learnt to swim.”

Her parents didn’t make announcements about what vocations they wanted their daughters to choose, though Bisera assumes that, like most other parents, they wanted their children to be doctors or something similar in the domain of secure professions. They didn’t remonstrate later, but at the time they weren’t exactly thrilled that both of their daughters had chosen to be singers. Bisera knew immediately after completing economics secondary school that she wouldn’t go on to study at university, because that would just mean wasting time when she was someone who had already chosen her life’s calling.

“I’m surprised I even completed school, given how much I used to skip classes. I would flee school, go to the banks of the river Kupa, play a small transistor radio that I got, blaring music, lying on the grass, with no one to see me... The whole world was mine!

“There was a popular radio show during those years called ‘Mikrofon je vaš’ [the microphone is yours], which provided talented young singers throughout the then Yugoslavia with a chance. When they arrived in Sisak, I signed up and sang, and choose nothing less than the Lullaby of Birdland [a jazz standard]. I was only capable of singing the chorus in English, but beyond that it was difficult to understand what I wanted to say. Listening to me was famous composer and conductor Miljenko Prohaska, who praised my musicality, but the language in which I’d sung was unclear to him!”

Despite her English then being ‘a little strange’, Bisera nonetheless won!

She opted for the more difficult path from the very start of her artistic career, belonging to a strong minority without whom top musical values would not have been created.

“I simply wasn’t interested in anything other than music. I was, and remain, a lover of sound, of music, and for me there was no pursuit of monetary wealth, trucks, houses... I wouldn’t have known what to do with all that. Of course, I have nothing against money, on the contrary, but I’m not one of those who will do anything to get money. While I remain alive, may things stay as they are today. For me to live with mental and spiritual wealth. That is the only wealth that makes a person truly diligent and eminent.”

The borders of Yugoslavia used to be illustratively described as extending from Triglav [the

Slovenian mountain] to Đevđelija [the North Macedonian town of Gevgelija]. When Bisera became a measure of value in the domain of popular music from Triglav to Đevđelija, one TV Belgrade director wittily composed the success formula for every programme on domestic television, stating: “You must have Bisera, a cartoon and a BBC broadcast.”

Bisera was highly rated as a vocal soloist from the earliest days of her career, but not as much as she deserved. It was only after applying for a fourth time that she received the national recognition awarded when worthy artists become eligible for a state pension, with that additional monthly income popularly referred to as the national pension. She received a lifetime achievement award at the 2017 Nišville jazz festival in the Serbian city of Niš, while she’s also received two major awards over the last year: the lifetime achievement award of the Association of Jazz, Pop and Rock Musicians of Serbia, which was presented to her by jazz musician Jovan Maljković, the award’s previous laureate. Speaking at the time, he said that Bisera was the greatest singer he’d ever met.

The second recent accolade is the Special

Award of the Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment for her enduring contribution to the musical life of Belgrade. She received the award from new director of Kolarac Aleksandar Peković, who noted that Bisera is an outstanding artist who has had an extraordinary and lengthy career and has done a lot for the city and country with her music, especially for the temple of music and art that is Kolarac.

“I didn’t receive anything for 20 years, then I got two awards in one year. And I got scared. I thought about how they might be expecting me to depart soon, so they did something nice for me. These kinds of accolades would have meant much more to me if I had received them when I was at the peak of my career, when there was no end to my creativity. That would then have served as proof that my time and work were valued. No matter how much a lot of people didn’t understand what I was doing, they nonetheless felt what I wanted to say. But awards were lacking when I really deserved them.”

Bisera’s concerts and music tours are for musical gourmets, for connoisseurs, and they are worth remembering. She first learnt her craft in

Germany and made three guest appearances in the countries of the former USSR, where singers from Yugoslavia would go to earn money, but in order to do so they would also try to butter up the audience to the max by singing songs that were originally in English or Serbian in the Russian language. However, Bisera didn’t butter up the audiences.

“I sang for them what I would ordinarily sing; I sang English, sang songs by Elton John and domestic compositions. And I went down exceptionally well.”

Still, a special illustration of her emotional charge was provided by the 2007 concerts that were held in honour of formerly very popular and beloved Yugoslav rock band Indexi. Those concerts were first held in Sarajevo and Zagreb, then in Novi Sad and Belgrade. Just remembering that time presents the danger that her blood pressure will spike and her eyes will water.

“After the war, that 2007 was the first time that I found myself in Sarajevo again. I arrived with terrible jitters, with images from 20 years earlier combining, emotions, scenes from the ‘90s passing through my head, I encountered some people who I hadn’t seen for such a long time. Accompanied by Bata Kovač on the piano, on the bass was Fadil, who had been in Indexi, and I sang Jutro će promijeniti sve [Morning Will Change Everything], which was a favourite song that was originally sung by Davorin Popović. While we were rehearsing that day for the evening’s concert at Zetra [an arena in Sarajevo], the music of Indexi was playing constantly. At one point, all of us, as many as there were of us, all hugged and started crying because we were hurting to heaven. And Davorin was looking down on us from heaven and his voice resounded. When the time came for me to head out on stage that evening, I filled myself up with all the necessary pills – for pressure, for nerves, for the heart... I appeared, bowed to the audience, and a shriek arose. I didn’t raise my head, keeping it bowed to the floor, because I felt myself starting to cry. And I start swearing at myself in the ghastliest way, to calm myself, and the applause didn’t stop. I somehow pull myself together and start singing. And when I sang, chaos erupted.”

The Belgrade audience also presented a great sense of trepidation for Bisera for many years. She’d previously never had a solo concert in the city where she spent most of her life, and she especially had never performed at the Sava Centre, as she did that evening when she sang in honour of Indexi. And it ended up better than she could have even imagined. The audience gave her a standing ovation that seemed to never end. It was then that composer Kornelija Bata Kovač, who represented the integral spirit of Indexi, testified to me that, of all the concerts on that unforgettable tour, Bisera gave her best performance at that Sava Centre concert.

Today, less than a year after the death of this composer who left Bisera with some of her