My life Bisera Veletanlić, solo vocalist, jazz singer

most beautiful and popular songs – Milo moje, Zlatni dan [My Dear, Golden Day] – Bisera can’t hold back the tears at the very mention of Bata Kovač’s name.

“It was tough for me to get over his parting. Very tough. He was a beautiful being. People like Bata are inimitable. Everything I would say about him is insufficient. I loved him like a brother, and he loved me, he was married to his wonderful wife Snežana, who pampered and looked after him like a baby. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us, and I will sing his songs for as long as I continue singing.”

Bisera also appeared as an actress in famous TV series Grlom u jagode [The Unpicked Strawberries]. Director Srđan Karanović had imagined her specifically playing the role of the girl with whom the main character, Bane Bumbar, would lose his virginity! And later again, when shooting the film Sjaj u očima [Loving Glances], precisely twenty years ago, Karanović invited Bisera to sing the film’s title composition and to act in one episode, as charmingly as only she can.

“The reason this exceptional Điđa film didn’t go down as well as it deserved among audiences was due to the fact that it is so beautiful, humane, tender, so pleasant and made with such high art, devoid of swear words and cheap stunts and gags. That film is a precise illustration of what I’ve said about the music that I love and that I don’t abandon.”

Her concerts over the last twenty years would have been unimaginable without the accompaniment of her nephew, composer and pianist Vasil Hadžimanov, and his band.

“He is my nephew without whom everything would be empty. When I say empty, I mean my singing accompanied by someone else who would be correct, but that wouldn’t be “it”. With Vasil on stage, my blood cells work, I enjoy myself with him and his band. They are talented, educated, hardworking and I say they are gentlemen musicians. Vasil will have a Kolarac concert with the RTS big band in June.”

There was a spot in Belgrade during the 1990s called ‘Plato’ [Plateau], in the area between the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Philology, where audience would come to listen to Bisera and Vasil’s band. Those were evenings that were awaited eagerly, with all spots filled, tickets having sold out in advance.

“There’s that slogan that something is attractive to audiences from the ages of seven to seventy-seven. Those evenings at the Plateau were intended for audiences aged from seven to ninety-seven. Every time when I would sing, some young people would come and beg me to go to the foyer of the college so that they could show me how they sing; for me to listen to them and tell them what to do. During the concert’s break, they would approach my table and overwhelm me with questions. They wanted to talk about music. I also recall some young female professors from the faculty also came, and we would socialise and chat. That was the dark ‘90s and yet we somehow held ourselves together, actually we were held together by the music.”

It is interesting to listen to Bisera talking about the world music scene, when she, for instance, describes the greatness of Stevie Wonder or so wisely interprets how Madonna gained worldwide fame.

“She is an example of someone who had had a wondrous career and didn’t deserve it. I knew she was a bad singer, but I only realised how bad a singer she really is after the Wembley concert where she sang live with Sting and the backing vocalists accompanying her. She really didn’t know where she was or what she was singing, and these people were playing and singing, masterfully of course, which only served to emphasise her ignorance even more. But I take my hat off to her for creating an institution out of nothing. She is proof that, in this business, when you’re capable, you don’t even need to know how.”

Bisera has spent her entire life avoiding public places and scandals of any kind. She has only spoken to the media when she’s had a good professional reason to do so. She jokingly calls herself a free and prominent artist without a job.

Many people, even journalists, thought for years that she was somewhere else in the world; that she no longer lived here.

“People forget about you even when you live here, and especially if you don’t. When you reach an age at which you’re less active, they simply strike you off. I read how they wrote about great jazz musician Duško Gojković. I knew him personally and worked with him. He was a big name in the world of music, he performed with the best, but nobody cared about that while he was alive, and he didn’t live here but rather in Germany. Now that he has left this world, they write about him and seem to marvel in wonder at his biography. As if they are wondering whether it was really true. But that’s who we are: we aren’t capable of appreciating what we have, or of cultivating values.”

With an awareness of how uncertain a stake in life emotions are, Bisera doesn’t abandon hers, because they are the most secure link that she has with the music to which she has become attached. She shows them with her family and close friends, and once also showed emotions towards an unknown man, as was the case with assassinated Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić:

“I was invited to sing at some ceremony when he was already prime minister. We said our farewells and I gave him a big hug because I felt like he was one of my own. That was my only closer encounter with politics, with a politician. Zoran Đinđić was unique and special.”

Apart from music, Bisera has had another affinity for the past few decades: painting. She has had several solo exhibitions, and her paintings have been reviewed by writer and translator Silvija Monros Stojaković, who wrote: “Bisera is the only one who still endures from the bygone times of the pioneers of local music that is neither literally folk music nor the subsequent sociological phenomenon of turbo-folk. She is an original artist who is consistent to herself. That, among other things, is why she sometimes doesn’t sing... Periods without singing can sometimes last an eternity with this resplendent and enduring artist of ours, meaning she also resists...And when she can’t pour her colours into a song, Bisera will grab a canvas.”

Whatever she turns her hand to, Besera turns it into a work of art. Just as her name is of Arabic origin, she is a synonym for something that’s the brightest, the most precious, the most beautiful.