Drago Diklić

Drago Diklić is a Croatian singer, composer, bandleader and producer, one of the most important figures of Croatian pop and jazz. He was born on 28 November 1937 in Sinj, in Dalmatia, but in 1941 the family moved to Zagreb, where he grew up in the Trnje neighbourhood and has spent most of his life. In November 2024 he marked seventy years on stage with a concert at Zagreb's Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall.

In Zagreb he finished the Fourth Gymnasium and music school, where he played violin and trombone. As a schoolboy in 1954 he began playing jazz and dance music at Zagreb dances, and the same years brought his first recordings for Radio Zagreb and his first records. In 1958 he went abroad, to Germany, France, Morocco and Sweden, and turned professional, leading several bands of his own.

Back home in 1963 he started writing songs. "Još samo večeras" and "Oprosti, volim te", awarded at the Zagreb and Opatija festivals of 1963, became some of the most popular melodies of the time, and "Opet si plakala" and "Zagreb je najljepši grad" joined them among his festival classics. He founded and led a string of groups, among them Profesionalci, the Drago Diklić Quartet and Nonet, the Dixie Swingers, D.D. Five, his own big band and the Kvarner Big Band, and from 1972 to 1974 a large dance orchestra. As a jazz singer he worked with the big bands of Boško Petrović and Damir Dičić and played the Bled jazz festival in 1962, 1963 and 1964.

In 1970 he founded Alta, his own record and production company, described as the first private one in Croatia. He ran the Zagreb pop festival, Zagrebfest, seventeen times from 1971 on, and in 2023 the festival and the Croatian Composers' Society honoured him for it. His awards include the Porin for lifetime achievement and the Milivoj Körbler award of the Croatian Composers' Society, both in 2011. He also dubbed Lex Luthor in the Croatian version of The Lego Movie 2 and is a keen bridge player and official. The playlist gathers his recordings.