Laka

Elvir Laković, known to everyone as Laka, is a Bosnian rock singer-songwriter, born on 15 March 1969 in Goražde. His first song, in 1998, made him known across the country, and in 2008 he represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Eurovision Song Contest together with his younger sister Mirela.

In Goražde he went to music school to study guitar, but he disliked the way music was taught there and left. He also spent two years studying at the health faculty in Niš without graduating, and after the war he worked for various international organisations for six years. In the early days he played popular Bosnian folk songs in cafés, which gave him a small local following.

Everything changed in 1998, when he recorded his first song, "Malo sam se razočar'o". It became a big success and launched his career across the country, followed by "Vještica", "Mor'o" and "Piškila". In 2003 "Ja sam mor'o" won the Bosnian Davorin music award for the best rock song of the year. In 2004 Laka went to New York to try to start a band there, but came home after two and a half years, and in 2007 he released his first solo album, Zec, on Hayat Production; it also came out in Croatia on Menart.

With "Pokušaj", sung with Mirela, who is fourteen years younger, he won the Bosnian selection and went to Eurovision 2008 in Belgrade, where the song finished tenth in the final. He later read out Bosnia and Herzegovina's votes at the contests of 2009 and 2012. In 2008 he was also named MTV Best Adria Act, ahead of Jinx, TBF, Leloojamais and Marčelo, and on 23 October of that year he played his first big solo concert in Zagreb, filling the Tvornica club and premiering the new songs "Brko" and "Stvorenje".

Those songs led to his second album, Stvorenje, released in 2010 on Menart: ten songs produced by Denyken, which tportal.hr rated nine out of ten. Since then Laka has mostly released singles with videos, among them "Malokrvna", "Lizalo", "Životinje", "Poželjenje", "Ostarih", "Pubertet", "Hrčeš", "Radnica" and "Penzija".

Mirela, known as Lela, still sings backing vocals in his band and also manages it. In 2024 the two presented "Mama", released for Women's Day, and its sequel "Kraj", and Laka announced an album of eight new songs for Dallas Records, produced by his drummer Matko Gaće in Makarska. Asked about it on Serbian television that November, he said he does not usually release whole albums, because few people listen to an album from start to finish any more.