Berde Band

Berde Band is an unusual tamburica band from Slavonski Brod, in Slavonia, where it was founded in early 1992 and is still based. It stands apart from ordinary tamburica bands through its size, eight members, which makes it a kind of chamber tamburica orchestra, and through a repertoire that covers a whole range of genres, languages and cultures.

The band was founded by Marko Benić, who had played for more than twenty years in the orchestra of RTV Novi Sad with Janika Balaž. With him at the start were Antun Tonkić, Mario Katarinčić, Mladen Jurković, Mato Danković, Mladen Boček, Damir Butković and Željko Danković, all local musicians who had played in various groups and orchestras before. Benić is now a resting member; the line-up is Tonkić on the tamburica cello, Nikola Gabrić and Mladen Boček on brač, Jurković on bugarija, Mato Danković on bisernica, Damir Butković on vocals and berda, and Željko Danković on vocals and first brač.

They play traditional and composed folk music, Croatian and foreign pop, church hymns, popular classics, English evergreens, Spanish, French and Italian songs and Latin American dance music, in arrangements by professional arrangers: the Slavonian dance "Drmeš", "La Bamba", the Beatles' "Yesterday", Gershwin's "Summertime", Handel's "Hallelujah" and Schubert's "Ave Maria" among them.

Their albums include Evergreen (1993), Folk & Evergreen (1994), Poletit će sokol moj (1995, Croatia Records), Halleluja (1996, for the German market), Prođoh sela, gradove (2001, Orfej) and Pred zoru (2005). They have played all over Croatia, at the tamburica festivals of Požega, Slavonski Brod and Vinkovačke jeseni, in tourist seasons from Rovinj to Dubrovnik, and abroad in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the end of 1998 they spent 25 days on a tour of Canada and the United States with the singer Stjepan Jeršek "Štef", and they went back to North America in 2006. The playlist gathers their official videos.