Marinko Rokvić

Marinko Rokvić was a Serbian folk singer, born on 27 January 1954 in Kolunić near Bosanski Petrovac, to Drago and Bosa Rokvić. He grew up in the hamlet of Bujadnice, where he and his brother Dušan played the harmonica from childhood. After primary school he moved to Belgrade hoping to study music, but with only clarinet places left he went to an electrical engineering school instead and sang in the cultural society "Nikola Tesla".

He began his career in 1974 with his first record for the Zagreb label Suzy, "Kažite mi dobri ljudi", and that year he also made a record with Grupa Delije. At the Ilidža festival he made his name in 1977 with "Momak veseljak", sang "Zanela me svetla velikog grada" in 1978 and in 1980 had a big hit with "Snegovi beli opet veju".

His first album, "Ruža", came out in 1981, followed by "Prva ljubav" (1982) and "Da volim drugu ne mogu" (1983), whose title song reportedly sold about 600,000 copies. Through the 1980s he released an album nearly every year, among them "Kako da dođem na svadbu tvoju" (1984) and "Ljubav stara srce para" (1988), and later "Zbogom ženo nevernice lepa" (1995), "Rođena si da bi bila moja" (2000), "Skitnica" (2003) and "Gatara" (2008), recording 21 studio albums in all. He was a regular at the festivals, from Hit parada and MESAM to Moravski biseri, and he also recorded an album of sevdalinke and sang "Divne imam komšinice" in the 1983 series "Kamiondžije opet voze".

Marinko Rokvić's best-known songs include "Skitnica", "Svađalice moja mala", "Potražiću oči zelenije", "Polomio vetar grane", "Jedina moja" and "Ti za ljubav nisi rođena". He marked forty years on stage with a concert at Sava Centar in Belgrade in 2015, and in 2019 he received the Estrada-Music Award of Serbia for lifetime achievement. His sons Nikola Rokvić and Marko are also pop-folk singers.

He died in Belgrade on 6 November 2021, after a short illness, and was buried at the Novo bežanijsko cemetery. In 2022 he was posthumously given the award for the most successful performer at the Moravski biseri festivals.