Lidija Bajuk

Lidija Bajuk is a Croatian singer-songwriter and poet, born on 23 November 1965 in Čakovec, and one of the leading figures of contemporary Croatian ethno music. She sings traditional songs, above all from her native Međimurje, and writes her own songs inspired by them.

As a girl she played the violin at music school, and found her first guitar, her father's old one, in the cellar. After teacher training college in Čakovec she worked as a teacher and librarian in Međimurje before moving to Zagreb, where she studied ethnology and anthropology and worked at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research. Her first public performances were as a support act for John Mayall in 1987 and Joan Baez in 1989.

The live recording Ethno Ambient Live / Archaic Songs from Croatia (1994) made her one of the founders of the new Croatian ethno scene, alongside Dunja Knebl and the band Legen. Her albums are Zora-djevojka (1997), Kneja (1999), Tira les (2001), Luna (2005), Zipčica (2010), Matapur (2012) and Prelja (2015). She won the Porin for best folk song in 2006 and for the best folk and ethno album in 2015, and she sang "Izresla ruža rumena" and "U Korčuli kolo krete" with Klapa Cambi.

Bajuk is also a writer: she has published poetry collections such as Osmijeh je moja najbolja obrana (1991), Vučica (1999) and Papirnati brod (2013), and books of fairy-tale stories from Croatian mythology, among them Kneja (1999), which has been staged in Osijek and Čakovec. She composes for film, theatre and dance, has performed across Europe and as far as Nepal, Canada and Brazil, and since 2010 has led field research into the traditional music of Međimurje and other parts of Croatia.