Marjana Deržaj

Marjana Deržaj was a Slovenian pop singer, born on 25 May 1936 in Ljubljana, where she died on 18 January 2005. She started singing young in Ljubljana's clubs, and at ten she was already in the opera chorus of a production of Carmen. Later she sang often on radio and television, at the Slovenska popevka festivals and with the folk-pop group Dobri znanci.

Her first festival appearance was in Belgrade in 1957. In 1958 she won the Opatija festival with "Vozi me vlak v daljave", which she sang in alternation with Beti Jurković, and in 1960 she sang at the first jazz festival in Bled. She won at Bled in 1964 with "Poletna noč", composed by Mojmir Sepe to words by Elza Budau, and again in 1966 with "Ples oblakov". In 1974 she received the great gold plaque of Slovenska popevka, and in 1975 the audience award for "Mi smo taki", sung with Braco Koren.

She often took part in the Yugoslav selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. In 1964 her "Zlati april" shared first place with Sabahudin Kurt, who went to Copenhagen because he had more top marks from the jury. Her other entries included "Kako sva si različna" with Stane Mancini (1961), "Škrat pri klavirju" (1965), "Čarovnica" (1969) and "Sreča je spati na svojem" (1970). At the Zagreb festival she sang "Toni, Toni" (1962) and "Cipelica" (1964), and at Opatija also "Poljub v snegu" and "Domov bi šel" (1960).

Marjana Deržaj recorded 312 songs. The best known is "Poletna noč", which she first sang on Ljubljana radio in 1957; her other hits include "Zvončki in trobentice", "Orion", "V Ljubljano", "Ptičje strašilo", "To je moj zlati sin", "Ko gre tvoja pot od tod" and "Zvezde padajo v noč". In 1987 she was nominated for Dnevnik's personality of the year, and in 1995 she received the Viktor award for lifetime achievement.

She was married to the Slovenian mountaineer Ante Mahkota, and their daughter Tina is a writer and translator. Her greatest hits were gathered on the RTV Slovenija release Za vse poletne noči!, and on 20 June 2006 Založba Sanje published her biography, Marjana - Zvezde padajo v noč, by Katarina Lavš. A CD of the same name came out with it, made of recordings never released before, most of them from the RTV Slovenija archive.