Dunja Knebl

Dunja Knebl is a Croatian singer of acoustic folk and ethno music, and a translator. She was born in Zagreb on 23 March 1946, which is why she is on Muzika-Balkan, and besides Zagreb she has lived in Skopje, Belgrade and Karlovac, and abroad in Washington, Moscow and Jakarta.

She graduated in English and Russian at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1969 and spent most of her working life as a translator and language teacher, singing folk songs to her friends in her free time. In 1993 she turned to music professionally, and in 1994 she released her first solo album, Čuješ, golob, čuješ, twelve songs collected by Florijan Andrašec, one of the musicians she names as a big influence on her music.

Most of the songs she sings come from Croatia, above all from Međimurje, but also from the United States, North Macedonia and Russia. She is known for a crystal-clear voice and very simple arrangements, often with improvised instruments or none at all; her songs are slow and often sad and melancholic. Her album Iz globline srca was included in the London Rough Guide to World Music as an introduction to Croatian ethno music. She has also translated several Croatian cookbooks into English, and since 1997 she has performed her biographical monodrama, about becoming a singer at 47, more than twenty times.

By 2020 she had released fifteen albums, among them Četiri frtalji (2000), Da sam barem guska (2002), Polje široko, nebo visoko (2005), Kite i kitice (2007), Jelen pase (2010), 33 balade with Hrvoje Nikšić (2019), Svilarica svilu prede with Roko Margeta (2019) and Tamo gori (2020). She was nominated for the Porin for best female vocal in 1997 and won it in 2008 for the best ethno album, Kite i kitice; 33 balade and Tamo gori were nominated too. Svilarica svilu prede entered the Transglobal World Music Chart in January 2021, and Songbook Songs, also with Roko Margeta, was among the top 20 of the Balkan World Music Chart in 2021.

In 2024 she made the album Bilo je sada with Nina Romić and Jelena Galić, and in 2025 she received the lifetime achievement award at the Rock&Off music awards; a concert at the Vatroslav Lisinski hall in Zagreb celebrated her career.