Author: Ljiljana Kovačević
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 12 January 2012

The legend of Safikada, a young woman unhappy in love, has recently come to life on stage. Towards the end of December 2011, the opera Safikada premiered in Banja Luka after six years in the making. Artists from all around the region collaborated on it and the whole project cost hundreds of thousands of Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible marks (BAM).

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 14 December 2011

Error (22), Al-Alion (28), Fat Joe (20) and Ne-li (22) are Šutka Roma Rap (SRR), a band from one of Skopje’s poorest communities, Shuto Orizari, also known as Šutka. Located on the outskirts of the Macedonian capital, it is said to be one of the largest Roma communities in Europe.

Author: Merima Spahić
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 9 December 2011

The Sarajevo Jazz Festival celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in November 2011. As the audience attendance figures have continuously grown, the festival has proven to be a success, in spite of financial difficulties. The organisers of the prestigious festival see this as a result of the fact that world famous artists flock to Sarajevo every year.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 24 November 2011

Na pučini živog peska (On the High Seas of Quicksand) is the third album of the Montenegrin alternative music band Autogeni Trening (Autogenic Training). The awards and numerous concerts in the former Yugoslav republics are a sure sign that their music is also popular in the other countries in the region.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 18 October 2011

Foltin first hit it big with their second album, Arhimed, in the winter of 2000. They wore weird costumes akin to monks’ robes and did not have a single conventional instrument on stage, except for the bass guitar. The rest was made up of percussion with strange instruments, such as combs, tubes, or pots. These are known as “ready-made instruments.” The band utilises “Foltin-speak,” which is the phonetic mimicry of words from different languages without a semantic meaning.

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 16 September 2011

A vast number of stars from the world of music spent the end of July near Lake Krupac near Nikšić, the second largest city in Montenegro. The most popular rock bands from the former Yugoslavia performed at the music festival called Lake Fest. This was the first year of the three-day festival and attracted more than 15,000 people.

Author: Ljiljana Kovačević
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 7 September 2011

“Demofest has become a regional brand, long surpassing [the borders of] Banja Luka and Republika Srpska. [It] has become a gathering ground for bands from all over the region: Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. [Here they] all become one, united by music,” says Brankica Janković, spokeswoman of the music festival that took place at Banja Luka’s Kastel fort 27-29 July and introduced 24 emerging bands from the former Yugoslavia.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 29 August 2011

There are nine instrument players in the Qerimaj family from Përmet, in southeast Albania. They are all known for playing various musical instruments.  The story began with the patriarch of this family, Ethem Qerimaj, 77, who is one of Albania’s most charismatic violists with a remarkable musical history.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 08 August 2011

The fact that a collection of Albanian and Balkan folk songs is now being performed by Belgian orchestras is thanks to Gjovalin Nonaj, an Albanian master accordionist who has been living in Belgium for the last 15 years.

Author: Refki Alija
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 25 July 2011

The verdict of audiences and organisers on the first large music festival in Prizren, Kosovo – NGOM – was unanimous: it was an excellent idea.

Author: Jovan Ristić
Place: Serbia
Date: 30 June 2011

Nikola Diskić, 28, a young baritone from Serbia, recently reached the finals of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, one of the most prestigious in the world of classical music. Diskić was awarded the title of Laureate and thereby achieved the greatest ever feat by a Serbian artist in the competition’s 50-year history.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 14 June 2011

The lights at Albania’s Theatre of Opera and Ballet (TOB) are now on for more than half the year. This is due to a wider opening of this institution to all the musical cultures of the world.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 14 June 2011

The lights at Albania’s Theatre of Opera and Ballet (TOB) are now on for more than half the year. This is due to a wider opening of this institution to all the musical cultures of the world.

Author: Dejan Trajkoski
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 24 May 2011        

Simon Trpceski (born in 1979 in Skopje) is one of best young pianists alive today. He has performed with a number of prestigious philharmonics from all over the world. Even before his graduation from the Faculty of Music in Skopje (2002) in the class of Professor Boris Romanov, Simon started winning international awards. In 2000, he won the London International Piano Competition, and from 2001 to 2003 he was a member of the BBC New Generation Scheme. After his graduation he was also awarded with the Young Artist Award by Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Society. Afterwards, his career started moving upwards very fast.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 11 May 2011

With its pulsating, energetic music and socially engaged lyrics, Dubioza Kolektiv, a band from Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has earned a special place among music fans in the region of the former Yugoslavia as well as in other countries. The seven member group that's currently on a European tour until the end of July is well known for its mix of reggae, rock and hip-hop, which best comes to life on stage in live performances.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: Serbia
Date: 11 April 2011

The arrival of the digital age in music has made its use obsolete, but there are still a lot of bands who build their sound solely on analogue equipment. One of them, probably the best in this respect in the Balkan region, is Petrol, the psychedelic rock trio from Belgrade. The Serbian band, formed in 2003, started out as an improvisational unit. Today, its founding members, Ana Janković (combo organ, bass synth), Milan Bukejlović (drums), and Ilija Duni (vocals, synth, guitar), play a recognisable style which has brought them critical acclaim for their debut album, "Nezgodno vreme, opasni dani" (Inconvenient Times, Dangerous Days), and mounting expectations for its successor, which should be released in the next few months.

Author: Dejan Trajkoski
Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 04 April 2011        

Dragan Dautovski is a musician who plays a most unusual musical instrument, the prehistoric, 6000 year old, globular ceramic flute – the Ocarina. This instrument, from the Neolithic period, has been discovered during the archaeological explorations carried out in the vicinity of the town of Veles. Dautovski (born in 1957) is a professor at the Faculty of Music Art of the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: Croatia
Date: 3 February 2011

One of the main reasons Darko Rundek is so revered in all of former Yugoslavia is his profound simplicity. Or maybe it's his undeniable skill for projecting simplicity through his otherwise emotionally and instrumentally complex music. His live performances can be overwhelming and his stage persona a mystery, yet this Croatian singer-songwriter always sings and writes songs with an erudite clarity that's unrivalled in the Balkans.

Author: Rudina Hoxha
Place: Albania
Date: 20 December 2010

An iso-polyphonic song, dedicated to the woes of emigration that are well known to many Albanians has been taken to heart by Roland Çenko, the lead singer of the most prominent iso-polyphonic group of the moment in Albania, called ‘Argjiro’.   

Author: Tijana Jovanović-Petrović
Place: Serbia
Date: 21 November 2010

Horkestar (formerly Horkesskart) is an amateur choir from Belgrade whose members, rather atypically, did not undergo a selection process that tested their ear for music or musicality.

Author: Merima Spahić
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 12 November 2010

The 2010 international jazz festival in Sarajevo began with a 90 minute journey around Thrace, the westernmost part of Turkey. Multi-instrumentalist Burhan Öçal and his Trakya All Stars ensemble took their enraptured audience on a trip around this region.

Author: Zoran Kosanović
Place: Serbia
Date: 14 September 2010

The small town of Guča in western Serbia has no more than 3,000 inhabitants. However, every year, at the end of August, the town turns into the second largest city of the country. The reason is the internationally known traditional brass band gala: the Guča festival. It is often described as "the craziest party in Europe"...

Author: Daniela Marinković
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina 
Date: 21 August 2010

The third annual Demofest, held in Banja Luka from July 21 to July 24, is en route to becoming the leading event for aspiring rock bands in the region of former Yugoslavia. This year's Demofest received applications from 378 bands from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Author: Refki Alija
Place: Kosovo*  
Date: 17 August 2010

Petrit Çeku, a young musician from Prizren, an old city in south-western Kosovo, is currently studying classical guitar in Baltimore under the tutelage of the renowned musician Manuel Barrueco. Çeku says that the opportunity to hone his skills as a soloist at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory is a boyhood dream come true.

Place: Serbia
Date: 06 August 2010

Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, is fast building up a reputation as one of Europe’s music capitals. Find out why with DJ Goran Simonoski

Place: The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 09 August 2010

Tour Skopje, the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with world renowned guitarist Toni Kitanovski.

Place: Albania
Date: 3 August 2010

Take a trip around Albania’s youthful capital with pop singer Rosela Gjylbegu...

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 23 July 2010          

The Kočani Orkestar is an extraordinary musical experience but also an extraordinary personal tale. The family of its leader, King Naat Veliov, has maintained the band for close to a century. As Naat remembers, at least since Naat’s grandfather Ahmet, settled in the town of Kočani, in what was still the Ottoman Empire in the final days of its sunset (1912-1913).

Author: Daniela Marinković
Place: Serbia
Date: 19 July 2010

There was no shortage of excitement at this year’s Exit festival as young people from Serbia, the neighbouring countries and all other parts of Europe arrived to hear a lineup that included bands like Placebo, the Chemical Brothers and an impressive number of other well-known bands. Faith No More's performance of "Ajde Jano", an ancient and popular Serbian folk song, and the bandleader Mike Patton's attempts to dance the Kolo ("Kolo Baby!") became an instant You Tube hit with 100,000 views only 48 hours later and over 280.000 a week later.

Author: Ahmet Emre Çoban
Place: Turkey
Date: 19 July 2010

In memory of Leyla Gencer, the greatest Turkish opera soprano ever and one of the most remarkable and admired opera singers in the world, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) in Şişhane has lovingly recreated her Milan home in Istanbul. Named “Leyla Gencer House”, the house contains her living room, library, dining room and bedroom. In the living room, her piano has been put at the forefront, and all furnishings including chairs, curtains, and carpets have been painstakingly placed as they were when she was alive.

Author: Aleksandar Arežina
Place: Serbia
Date: 11 July 2010

In March 2010, Kornelije Kovač, one of the most important composers of pop and rock music in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, published an autobiography, entitled Fusnota (Footnote). In it, he relates the circumstances which inspired some of the most important songs in his half a century long career.

Author: Andrija Igić
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 21 June 2010

The northern part of the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica in Kosovo was host to this year's eighth annual North City Jazz and Blues Festival, which gathered nearly a dozen domestic and foreign artists, including Frank Lacy, Tony Lacatos, and Triphasic. Locals flocked to the culture center in Zvečan, a Mitrovica suburb, to attend the international music festival, which was opened this year by Kosovo-born musician Petar Rakić and the Nušić chorus from Mitrovica, who gave the stage to Frank Lacy and Dušan Novakov Quartet as the evening progressed

Author: Daniela Dobožanović
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 9 June 2010

Apart from performing with her band, she teaches singing and vocal technique and publishes articles, or is working on her PhD thesis on the presence of musicians from Southeast Europe on the Austrian jazz scene.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: Croatia
Date: 17 May 2010

Ever since he was a 17 year old boy growing up in Ivanić-Grad, a small town near Zagreb, Croatia, Branko Galoić has had a passionate kinship with music. Galoić, who in the year 2000 moved to Amsterdam and recently released his second album "Skakavac" (meaning grasshopper or locust), says that initially, everything he learned about music came from Ivanić-Grad's local musicians.

Author: Tatjana Lazarević
Place: Kosovo*
Date: 22 January 2010

“The music by emerging bands tells of young people's bitterness for the surrounding world. Words are brutal, lyrics are cruel, and music soaks rebellion". A journey through the music scene in north Mitrovica and its young protagonists  

Author: Nataša Josifović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 29 May 2010

Rambo Amadeus is one of the rare musicians in southeast Europe who dedicates a considerable amount of his time and effort to increasing awareness of ways to save energy and preserve the environment.
The artist, whose real name is Antonije Pušić, was born in Kotor (Montenegro) in 1963, where he graduated from the Naval High School.

Author: Ruby Russell
Place: Croatia
Date: 10 February 2010

BJ Nevenko is originally from Petrinja in central Croatia and moved to Graz, Austria in 1991, shortly after war broke out in Yugoslavia. Starting out as a journalist, Nevenko’s passion for music eventually took over and he became a pioneer of a Europe-wide movement that is re-interpreting traditional Balkan sounds.

Author: Tijana Jovanović Petrović
Place: Austria / the Western Balkans
Date: 20 February 2010

The Salzburg-based Danica ensemble is one of the only several performers of traditional Balkan folk music in Austria. In only several years, the group's popularity has spread through Austria and beyond. Members of Danica can boast frequent performances throughout Europe and a number of successful tours, including one with actress Mira Banjac and another with the legend of Serbian traditional music Predrag "Cune" Gojković.

Author: Ruby Russell
Place: the Western Balkans
Date: 10 February 2010

Robert Soko is among the fathers of Balkanbeats – a genre of party music that is taking some of the most exciting Southeast European sounds and bringing them to a global audience. Soko grew up in former Yugoslavia listening to western-influenced guitar music and spent his early twenties “wandering Europe and learning languages”.

Author: Tijana Jovanović Petrović
Place: Serbia
Date: 3 February 2010

Boris Kovač is a multimedia artist from Serbia, or more precisely from the country's northern province of Vojvodina. Kovač is one of the few world music composers and performers in Europe who, after thoroughly researching their own musical tradition, have managed to incorporate their heritage into a music free of the cliches of market demand.

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 30 January 2010

A sensation of rapidly growing proportions in the region of Southeast Europe and beyond, Toni Kitanovski & Cherkezi are a band which combines jazz extravaganza with Roma wedding brass music. They came about when Kitanovski, likely the best jazz guitarist in this part of the world, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s most famous one, invited them, fascinated by the music Cherkezi played.

Author: Danijela Marinković
Place: Serbia
Date: 1 February 2010

The Boban & Marko Marković Orchestra is not only the most famous brass band to emerge from the Balkans, but is also, alongside Goran Bregović and Emir Kusturica's No Smoking Orchestra, one of Serbia's top stage wonders. Named and led by father and son, the Marković Orchestra combines traditional Serbian and Roma music, jazz, funk, and other contemporary music genres, with masterful trumpet playing and an electric stage performance.

Author: Jovan Ristić
Place: Serbia
Date: 30 November 2009

Lonely Planet travel guide ranks currently Serbia’s capital Belgrade as the world's number one party city in terms of the quality and diversity of its nightlife. Paradoxically, this image was forged initially during the last decade of the 20th century, an unfortunate time for Serbia. It all started in clubs that played western electronic music, and the B92 radio station (today a TV station as well).

Author: Vuk Perović
Place: Podgorica, Montenegro
Date: 20 November 2009

Jamaica, the land of reggae, a music that has captured the world. The Jamaican capital Kingston and Montenegro's capital Podgorica are almost 12 hours of air travel apart - or would be, if a direct flight existed. Were an adventurer to decide to travel from one city to the other, his journey would in reality take a great deal more than half a day...

Author: Risto Karajkov
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia**
Date: 26 November 2009 The 28th edition of the Skopje Jazz Festival took place on 22 – 26 October. During five festival evenings, visitors - many coming from the neighbouring countries - had the opportunity to enjoy live, animated music.

Author: Aleksandar Arežina
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 31 October 2009

In its five years of existence and after two albums, Letu Štuke, a rock band from Sarajevo, has picked up numerous accolades and quite a following in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the neighbouring Croatia. Last summer the band, headed by frontman Dino Šaran, set its sights on Serbia - the former Yugoslavia's most populous and biggest republic, where it first appeared and was well-noted at the internationally renowned Exit music festival.

Author: Emrah Güler
Place: Turkey
Date: 23 October 2009

In its history of half-a-century, Turkish pop music has always had close ties with the Western tunes. When music from the West found its way into its modern culture, the Turkish pop music emerged rather in a mediocre way with simple conversions of popular Western tunes. They were entertaining but swam on the surface, distanced from the folk tunes of Anatolia.

Author: Milomir Niketić
Place: Serbia
Date: 13 November 2009

Peter Milliken has been a legislator for two full decades and speaker of Canada's Parliament for eight years. Milliken probably does not speak a word of Serbian, although he is quite familiar with one Serbian surname – that of Teofilović.

Place: Serbia
Author: Jovan Ristić
Date: 16 October 2009

Over 35 years later, the fame of Bora Dugić's mastery with the simple flute can compare to the renown of Stanley Clarke's bass-guitar playing. Both have taken underestimated instruments and expanded their uses inconceivably.

Place: Kosovo*
Author: Refki Alija
Date: 15 September 2009

Kosovo's music scene has never been more developed and diverse than in the last ten years. Nightclubs that can accommodate up to a thousand and half people are being built. Internationally-famous DJs like John Digweed, Terry Francis, Eddy Richards, Method Man, Red Man, Gaz-Gaz are being invited to perform at these clubs.

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 28 August 2009

If he were alive today, Edward Bernays, the US pioneer in the public relations field, would probably be appalled - or maybe flattered - by the fact that rock bands have started to name themselves after him. It surely isn't a trend, but Bernays Propaganda, a four-man group from Skopje who were inspired by Bernays' 1928 book 'Propaganda', have caught the Balkan music scene by surprise. Although formed merely 2.5 years ago, the Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji List recently named the quartet "the best new indie-band in the region".

Author: Dejan Trajkoski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 20 August 2009

Composer Ennio Morricone, opera singer Jessye Norman and tenor José Carreras, are some of the artists whose performances have opened one of the best known festivals in Southeast Europe, the Ohrid Summer Festival. In addition to a 49-year-long tradition and a history of staging some of the world's biggest music and theatre names, the location of the festival based in the scenic city of Ohrid, with its 2,000 year-old ancient theatre and close to the 11th century Saint Sophia Cathedral, delights fans from all over the world.

Author: Suzana Gajić
Place: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: 16 July 2009

Banja Luka, the second largest town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, located in northern Bosnia (140 kilometers northwest from the country’s capital Sarajevo), hosted its Rock Open Air Festival on 17 and 18 July. Uriah Heep and BC Sweet, along with a number of regional rock bands, heated up the atmosphere on the green river bank of Vrbas, near the fortress Kastel, which dates back to the times when the Romans ruled in the Balkans.

Author: Arbana Osmani
Place: Albania
Date: 20 June 2009

The Festival of modern Albanian music, Top Fest Awards, received the full attention of millions of viewers who were nailed in their seats watching it on Top Channel TV. The final night of this event took place on May 16th and introduced established and upcoming artists under a modern MTV style setting.

Author: Jovan Ristić
Place: Serbia
Date: 06 July 2009

The Exit Festival, one of Europe's major music festivals, will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. The milieu of Petrovaradin Castle, built by Austrian military engineers in the 18th century on a hill overlooking the city of Novi Sad and Danube river, is definitely a major part of the popular festival's appeal...

Author: Aleksandar Sazdovski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 29 June 2009

Much like Bitola, their native town, Foltin is a band that treats music with the openness expected from a place that since the Ottoman period is known as "the city of the consuls". Formed in 1995, the group has released five albums (Out Re-Mer, Archimed, Donkey Hot, Lo-Lee-Ta-Too, Ova Transplantirana Mashina) which perfectly epitomise the rich, colourful and diverse background of the second largest city in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Author:  Aleksandar Arežina
Place: Serbia
Date: 4 May 2009

Trenchtown 09 festival, held between 30 April and 2 May near the town of Subotica in the north of Serbia, proved that a previously local event had definitely turned into an interesting Euro-regional rock festival, attractive to domestic audience as well as to guests from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Hungary and other neighbouring countries. It was like a light version of the larger Novi Sad based festival of European fame, Exit.     read on

Author: Kostadin Surbanovski
Place: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Date: 9 March 2009

Electronic music, more that any other music, managed to flourish rapidly and successfully on the Macedonian soil in the last two decades. The capital Skopje is the centre of a thriving expansion of fresh ideas and creative energy, gravitating since the very beginning around Kanal 103, a progressive, non-profit and independent music radio station and the strongest supporter and promoter of new cutting edge music.

Author: Silvana Srdoc
Place: Croatia
Date: 13 March 2009
(photos: Martina Kenji/tportal.hr)

The Beat Fleet, a Croatian band widely known by its initials TBF, is the brightest star on the music scene in the region. As it goes with most acclaimed musicians, TBF crosses musical genres, with hip hop roots, mixed with rock, spiced with jazzy vibe and a reggae groove.

Author:  Marko Vesović
Place: Montenegro
Date: 03 March, 2009

With the recent appearance of several young and talented musicians, the Montenegrin music scene once again looks towards Europe filled with optimism.

Author:  NAZLI DEMIROZ
Place: Turkey
Date: 18 February 2009

April is the month to celebrate spring with musical notes blooming in Turkey's capital city. It is the time for Ankarans to refresh themselves, refrain from their wintry moods and wake up their souls!