Bolero

Bolero is a rock band from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded in 1982 and named after Ravel's famous Boléro. The band was only active for a few years in the 1980s, but its two studio albums did very well with the public, and songs such as "Galebovi", "Dajana", "Sjećanja", "Misli na mene", "Na kraju slavlja", "Jelena", "O Jesenjinu", "Krčmarska Moskva" and "Pismo majci" are still played.

The founder and frontman was Miroslav Bartulica from Livno, guitarist, backing singer and lyricist. With him were the singer Mile Anđelić, the bassist Mustafa Čizmić, the drummer Zoran Grabovac and the keyboardist Nedžad Hadžić; in 1985, while Hadžić was doing military service, Dino Olovčić stood in for him. Among those who auditioned as singer was Mladen Vojičić Tifa, later the singer of Bijelo dugme.

After three years of rehearsing, the band started working in earnest in 1985. Their first album, Na kraju slavlja, came out in November 1986 but was only presented in April and May 1987; it sold about 150,000 copies and was pressed twice more. The second, O Jesenjinu (1988), sold about 100,000 copies and is marked by melancholy. Bartulica's model was the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, and parts of his poems can be heard in Bolero's songs. The actor Rade Šerbedžija was a guest on the album. Its best-known song is probably "Jelena", and the album was presented with a big concert in front of Sarajevo Cathedral.

The band broke up in 1989 and its members scattered around the world, while Bartulica stayed in Livno and made a singer-songwriter album, Ludnik. In 2006 the members met in Split and recorded "Bosna u basni", and in 2011, as Grupa Bolero-reunion, they released the single "Dispertango", but neither attempt brought the band back. Drummer Zoran Grabovac died in early 2013.

In the summer of 2013 the band played two comeback concerts, in Livno and Sarajevo, with Bartulica and Čizmić, now singing, joined by Vedran Kalinić, Damir Sinanović and Dino Olovčić. On 2 December 2016, at a charity concert in Sarajevo's Skenderija, they took back the plain name Bolero and appeared with a new singer, Antonio Popović Tony, and Bartulica announced a new album with him. A best-of collection followed in 2019.