Damir Avdić

Damir Avdić is an underground musician, writer and performer from Tuzla, born there in 1964. He is also known by the nicknames Graha, Diplomatz and Bosanski psiho, the Bosnian Psycho. On stage he works alone, with only an electric guitar and his voice, in a raw style that sits between punk, hardcore and blues.

He has been active since the late 1980s. In Tuzla he fronted the hardcore punk band Rupa u zidu, which released five studio albums. He later spent several years in San Francisco, and after moving to Ljubljana he went solo.

His first solo album, …od trnja i žaoka, came out in 2004 on Zdenko Franjić's Zagreb label Slušaj najglasnije!. It was followed by Mrtvi su mrtvi (2008) and Život je raj (2010) on Moonlee Records; the latter, his third full-length record, was made entirely by himself, without drums, in minimal distorted proto-punk and mellow bluesy riffs.

From 2012 he released his albums on Kapital Rekord: Mein Kapital. (2012), Human Reich (2013), Manjina (2015), his sixth solo album, introduced by the single "Čuvaj se", Amerika (2017), Radikalno šik (2019) and Mainstream Horror (2022). His songs take on uncomfortable subjects of the post-war transition, and his concerts are known for their intensity.

Avdić is a writer as well. His novel Na krvi ćuprija (2005) is tied to his first solo album, and it was followed by Enter Džehenem (2009), Kuda sestro (2011), Tiket za revoluciju (2012) and Ne želim da pobijedim. (2014); his books often deal with the urban frustrations of ordinary young men in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has acted in theatre, written music for film and theatre, and performs a spoken-word show that includes the monodrama Ja anarhista.

In 2013 the Slovenian documentary Damir Avdić: Pravi čovjek za kapitalizam, directed by Dušan Moravec, had its world premiere at the Starigrad Paklenica Film Festival.