Branka Šćepanović

Branka Šćepanović is a Montenegrin singer of traditional and folk songs from Montenegro. She was born on 6 April 1951 in Kolašin, and since 1968 she has recorded the old songs of her homeland.

After finishing music school she tried, without success, to find work as a music teacher, and came to see that singing would be her calling. Her father, a strict patriarchal man, was against it at first, fearing it would lead to singing in kafanas; once he saw that she wanted to be a radio and television soloist, he never again stopped her from performing.

The turning point came in 1968, when she was invited to the Beogradski sabor festival as the representative of Montenegro and was given an ovation lasting several minutes. Her first EP, Razvila se rumen zora, came out that year on Beograd Disk, followed by an EP of Montenegrin folk songs for Jugoton in 1969. From 1970 she recorded for PGP RTB, which released a long run of singles and EPs, among them "Vasojevka" and "To je majko Crnogorac" (1972), "Oj, Moračo" and "Kršna moja Crna Goro" (1973) and "Volim tebe, Crna Goro" (1978).

Festivals carried her songs across Yugoslavia. She sang "Đevojko sa planine" at Ilidža in 1970, "Vasojevka" at the Beogradski sabor in 1972 and "Oj, Moračo" there in 1973, and from 1978 she was a regular at the Hit parada with songs such as "Kad zapjeva Crnogorka", "Kad đetići u Beograd krenu" and "Baš me zanima" (1984). In 1983 she sang "Crnogorsko natpjevavanje" at Ilidža as a duet with Ismet Krcić, in 1984 she appeared at MESAM, and in 1987 she sang at the Vogošća festival near Sarajevo.

Her best-known songs are "Vasojevka", "Baš me zanima" and "Gledala sam s Koma plava", which also gave its name to Zapisano u vremenu, a three-CD collection PGP RTS released in 2020. In 2001 she received the special Montefon award for her contribution to music.

She is often called the heir of Ksenija Cicvarić, a comparison she has said flatters her, while insisting that Ksenija was one of a kind. The two were friends on stage and off, and Branka visited her regularly in her last illness. She lives in Belgrade with her family and has always seen her work as keeping the true Montenegrin folk song alive for the generations to come.