Mate Bulić

Mate Bulić is a Croatian folk and pop singer from Herzegovina, born in 1957 in Blatnica, a village near Međugorje. Since the mid-1990s he has been known as the "King of the Diaspora", a name he earned singing for Croatian communities abroad from his home in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His music draws on traditional Croatian music, including the lijerica and ganga singing.

He was the second of three sons of a farming family, and it was his grandfather who first noticed his voice. In the seventh grade he entered a music festival without his parents' permission and won it. He went to the Electrotechnical School in Mostar, later graduated in economics and took a teaching job at an economics secondary school in Mostar, which he left. As a young man he was also a goalkeeper for NK Boksit Posušje, coached by Miroslav Blažević, who stayed a close friend.

In 1981 he moved to Frankfurt. For years he earned his living as a manual worker, six of them on building sites and unloading trucks, until his wife Zdravka encouraged him to sing again. He began performing at Croatian community venues and built a large following among the diaspora. His early albums were Šuti Đurđa (1983) and Tražim ženu tebi sličnu (1984), and from the 1990s came Gdje ste noćas prijatelji stari (1994), Samo pjesmu noćas tražim (1995), Pjevaj sestro, pjevaj brate (1996) and Dodijalo pajdo (1997). He worked with Nikša Bratoš and Zrinko Tutić, and his records are released by Croatia Records.

The big step at home came in 1998, when his manager Ivica Bubalo bet that he could fill a stadium in Split. On 6 June 1998 about 20,000 people came, and the concert opened the Croatian market to him; the live DVD Uživo, Split followed in 1999.

A friend of Marko Perković Thompson since the early 1990s, Bulić has sung nine songs Thompson wrote for him, the best known being "Gori borovina", the title song of his 2003 album. With Thompson and Miroslav Škoro he recorded an album as Tri kuma, and audiences nicknamed the three the Three Tenors. His other well-loved songs include "Moja Hercegovina", "Tiho, tiho teče Neretva" and "Domu mom", the title song of his 2011 album, and he has sung "Dvi sestre" with Mladen Grdović.

Later albums include Pjevajte sa mnom (1999), Kako mi je, tako mi je (2007) and the Christmas album Sretan Božić moj narode (2017). After more than thirty years on stage he toured Croatia in 2020 with the show "Ja sam na Vas ponosan", named after his latest hit, playing the Spaladium Arena in Split and a full Gradski vrt hall in Osijek. In 2023 he sang to some 13,000 people at the Croatian Night in Frankfurt, and in 2024 he joined Thompson on stage in Imotski.