Amila Sulejmanović

Amila Sulejmanović, who recorded simply as Amila, is a rock singer from Sarajevo, born on 5 April 1963. She studied law and spent a year touring the Soviet Union with a group of Sarajevo musicians before her first band, Kazablanka, with Mladen Pavičić and Admir Ćeremida, who later played in Plavi Orkestar.

In 1983 she sang backing vocals on "No. 1", the debut album of Valentino, and her duet with the group, "Volim te još", became a hit; according to Serbian Wikipedia she wrote its well-known chorus, though her name was not on the song. Through her partner of about two years, Goran "Ipe" Ivandić, the drummer of Bijelo Dugme, she came close to that band: she appeared in one of its videos and in 1985 sang backing vocals on its tour with the new singer Tifa.

Ivandić, Damir Misirlić and Amila then formed a band under her name, and in 1985 Jugoton released her debut album "Kakav divan dan". It mixed electro and synth-pop with a strong rock edge, with guests such as Sead Lipovača, Tifa and Alen Islamović, who sang with her on "Vodi me iz ovog grada", and its title song is still her best-known one. A second album, "Igre slobode", followed on PGP in 1986, with Zlatko Manojlović and Laza Ristovski among the guests, but it did not sell and the band broke up.

She sang backing vocals on Bijelo Dugme's "Pljuni i zapjevaj moja Jugoslavijo" (1986) and on its 1987 tour, and on records by Bombaj Štampa and Neda Ukraden. In 1987 she sang "Da sam ko bombona od meda i čokolade" at the Vaš šlager sezone festival in Sarajevo and "Južni pol" for the children's TV show "Bubamara", and she took part in the rock opera "Kreatori i kreature". A third album, "Vukovi i lisice", was never released.

Around 1988 Amila moved to London, where she still lives. She turned to world, jazz and experimental music, sent demos of Bosnian sevdalinke to Jah Wobble, sang on two singles from his "Umbra Sumus" (1998) and has toured with his band Deep Space. In 2018 she published "Ključ bubnja tama", a memoir-style love story about a young rock singer in Yugoslavia, written partly to keep the memory of Ivandić, who died in 1994.