Goran Bregović

Goran Bregović is a composer, songwriter and guitarist, born in Sarajevo on 22 March 1950. He was the main creative force behind Bijelo Dugme, and since the band ended he has become one of the best-known musicians to come out of the former Yugoslavia, playing venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall and l'Olympia.

He was expelled from music school as a violin pupil and learned guitar from a friend. As a teenager he played bass in school bands, earned money playing folk music in a kafana in Konjic, and in 1969 Željko Bebek invited him to play bass in Kodeksi, where he soon moved to lead guitar. In 1971 he formed Jutro, the band that on 1 January 1974 took the name Bijelo Dugme.

From 1974 to 1989 he played lead guitar in Bijelo Dugme and led it as its decision-maker and public face, through tours of Poland, Bulgaria and a 1985 concert in Moscow. Between albums he released a solo record in 1976, wrote the scores for Leptirov oblak and Lične stvari, co-produced Zdravko Čolić's Malo pojačaj radio and played guitar on records by Neda Ukraden, Hanka Paldum and Valentino. In 1984 he and Čolić founded their own label, Kamarad, which co-released the Bijelo Dugme album sung by Tifa.

In the band's last years he turned to film music. He scored Emir Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream, sung by Iggy Pop, and Underground, which won the Golden Palm in Cannes, as well as Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot. For Silent Gunpowder he won the Golden Arena for best film music at the 1990 Pula Film Festival. "Đurđevdan" and other pieces of his were later heard in the film Borat.

His albums with other singers include Düğün ve Cenaze with Sezen Aksu in 1997, records with George Dalaras and with Krzysztof Krawczyk, and Kayah i Bregović, which sold over 700,000 copies in Poland. He has also written for Cesária Évora and Severina.

From 1998 he has toured the world with his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, a brass band with strings, a male choir and Bulgarian singers, mixing Balkan, Romani, Greek and Turkish themes. He took part in the three farewell concerts of Bijelo Dugme in 2005, played the interval act of the 2008 Eurovision final in Belgrade and composed the Serbian entry of 2010, "Ovo je Balkan", sung by Milan Stanković. In 2026 he released "God Is Not Your Babysitter" with Dubioza Kolektiv.