Alfi Nipič

Alfonz "Alfi" Nipič is a Slovenian singer of popular and folk-pop (narodnozabavna) music, born on 17 September 1944 in Maribor. For decades he has been one of the best-known voices of Slovenian music, and to many listeners he is simply "Mr. Silvester", after the song that made him famous.

He became interested in music as a schoolboy, sang at all kinds of celebrations and learned to play the guitar. His first professional appearance came on 5 December 1962 in Koper. After a textile secondary school he worked for a time in a Maribor textile factory, then gave it up to live from music, singing in cafés and hotels in Maribor, Ljubljana and Koper. He also spent two years in Zagreb singing rock with the band Clan.

His breakthrough was "Silvestrski poljub", recorded in 1971 at the request of producer Jože Privšek, with lyrics by Dušan Velkaverh. It became an evergreen that is played every December, and Alfi later recorded it in several versions, among them one with Ansambel Lojzeta Slaka. His first pop record followed in 1973.

When Slavko Avsenik called him, Alfi turned to folk-pop and became the singer of Ansambel bratov Avsenik, with whom he sang from 1974 to 1989. He has recalled months with as many as 21 concerts and nearly twenty years spent three quarters of the time away from home. He recorded hundreds of songs with the ensemble and wrote around 370 pieces of his own.

Alongside the Avsenik years he sang with Neca Falk, with whom he recorded the duet "Kako sva si različna", and released a long run of solo albums, from Mladi kot smo nocoj (1990) and Ostal bom muzikant (1991) to Praznujmo skupaj (1993), Tehno Alfi (1994), Hvalnica za srečo (1997) and Vse moje misli (2004). In 1997 he also recorded an album with the polka musicians Walter Ostanek and Frank Yankovic. At Melodije morja in sonca in 1979 he sang "Bela jadrnica", and in 2009 he changed his style once more, working with Domen Kumer.

On 24 December 2014 President Borut Pahor awarded him the Order for Merits for fifty years of uninterrupted musical work and for keeping the Slovenian musical tradition alive among Slovenians abroad. In 2022 he was made an honorary citizen of Maribor. A small museum in the village of Jarenina presents his career, his awards and his stage costumes.