Asim Brkan

Asim Brkan is a Bosnian folk singer from Mostar, born in 1954, and one of the finest and most complete folk singers of his generation. He grew up partly in the countryside with his cousins, later moved with his family to the centre of Mostar and finished the electrical engineering school there.

As a teenager he sang in a folklore club in Mostar and performed at the hotel Rose beside the Neretva, and later sang sevdalinka and old folk songs in restaurants around the city. He was noticed and signed by Jugoton in Zagreb, and his first single, "Tvoje oči garave", composed by Mijat Božović, came out in 1976. It was followed by "Ne ruši mi sreću, nepoznata ženo!" (1978) and "Jednom sam i ja volio" (1979), his biggest hit, both composed by Aca Stepić. In 1981 Tereza Kesovija joined him on stage at the Gripe hall in Split to sing "Jednom sam i ja volio" with him.

At his peak, from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, he was one of the biggest stars in Yugoslavia, selling millions of records. After his first album Voli me, grli me (1981) he moved to Belgrade and to PGP-RTB, where he made Najljepšu haljinu večeras obuci (1982) with the composer Ljubo Kešelj, then Majko, prijatelju moj (1984), Ema (1985), Još me ima! (1989) and I tako idu dani (1990). He worked with singers and composers such as Zoran Kalezić, Miroslav Ilić and Marinko Rokvić, and in Belgrade the press nicknamed him "the Count of Kalinić" for his elegant dress and manners. He never sang at weddings, saying there must be a difference between a radio and TV singer and a local entertainer.

Beside his own hits he is remembered as an outstanding singer of sevdalinka. His "Sjetuje me majka" and "Iz kamena voda tekla" are in the Anthology of Bosnian sevdah, and he recorded songs by sevdah writers such as Jozo Penava and Ismet Alajbegović Šerbo for the radio and TV archives in Sarajevo and Belgrade. When he recorded "Sjetuje me majka" for the national archive, the Sarajevo Music Academy professor Edin Pandur said it was better even than Safet Isović's version.

When the wars began he left Belgrade with his family for the Netherlands and later Germany, where his friend Halid Muslimović invited him to sing again. He came back to Bosnia in 1994, released Zlata in 1996 and then withdrew from the scene. In 2009 PGP-RTS issued a Best of with his songs from 1976 to 1990, he recorded sevdalinke for the music production of BHRT, and his version of "Mujo kuje" entered the National Music Register five days after it was recorded. A few weeks later, on a television show, he sang live again for the first time in more than a decade.