Aleksandar Sarievski

Aleksandar Sarievski was a Macedonian folk singer and songwriter, born on 20 June 1922 in Galičnik, a village near Debar. His career lasted almost six decades, and he was one of the most recognisable figures in Macedonian music.

He finished secondary school in Skopje, where he learned to play the accordion. Right after the Second World War, in 1946, he recorded his first song for Radio Skopje, "A bre nevesto oko kalešo". He was one of the founders of Tanec, the Macedonian folk ensemble set up in Skopje in 1949, and toured the world with it throughout his career as an ambassador of Macedonian music.

Sarievski collected the old songs as well as singing them, and his versions of many of them are the first known recordings: "Jovano, Jovanke", "More sokol pie", "Uči me majko, karaj me", "Aber dojde, Donke" and "Dejgidi ludi mladi godini" among them. In his own songs he sang of his native Galičnik, of unanswered love and of the men who left to work abroad, and he was known for many humorous songs too. He recorded about 400 songs in all, including duets with Vaska Ilieva.

His best-known composition is "Zajdi, zajdi, jasno sonce", which many people across the former Yugoslavia take for a folk song although he wrote it; it found a new audience in the 2000s, when Toše Proeski recorded it on his album Božilak. Aleksandar Sarievski died in Skopje on 19 December 2002, aged 80, and the President, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Culture sent his family their condolences.