Oliver Dragojević

Oliver Dragojević was a Croatian singer and songwriter whose music joined Dalmatian klapa melodies with pop, jazz and blues. He was born on 7 December 1947 in Split, into a family from Vela Luka on the island of Korčula, which had spent the Second World War as refugees in the El Shatt camp in Egypt. As a child he learned the harmonica, and at the music school in Vela Luka he studied piano, clarinet and bass guitar.

In 1961 he first sang at the Split Children's Festival with "Baloni", and his band Batali won an amateur contest with a cover of the Beatles' "Yesterday". From 1972 he played clubs in Germany, Sweden and Mexico. He began his solo career in 1974 by winning the Split Festival with "Ča će mi Copacabana", and in 1975 "Galeb i ja", written with the composer Zdenko Runjić, became a hit across Yugoslavia. Between 1975 and 1980 the partnership with Runjić, who wrote more than 200 songs for him, dominated the scene, with hits such as "Romanca", "Oprosti mi, pape" and "Stari morski vuk", and the lyricist Jakša Fiamengo wrote many of his best-known songs, "Nadalina" among them. "Vjeruj u ljubav" was the title song of his 1979 album.

He made a long run of albums, from "Ljubavna pjesma" (1975), "Malinkolija" (1977) and "Poeta" (1978) through "Svirajte noćas za moju dušu" (1988), "Neka nova svitanja" (1994), "Duša mi je more" (1997) and "Dvi, tri riči" (2000) to "Tišina mora" (2013). "Cesarica" came out in 1993 at the Melodije hrvatskog Jadrana festival. In 1990 he won the Split Festival with "Ti si moj san" and Jugovizija with "Sreća je tamo gdje si ti", both with Zorica Kondža, and he finished second at Jugovizija in 1988 and at Dora in 1995.

He was awarded the Order of Danica Hrvatska in 1995 and sang at Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, L'Olympia and the Sydney Opera House. In 2011 he recorded "Noć nek' tiho svira" with the cellist Stjepan Hauser, and his album "Familija" with Gibonni won the Porin for album of the year in 2017.

Oliver Dragojević, married to Vesna since 1974 and the father of three sons, made his lung cancer public in August 2017. He died in Split on 29 July 2018, aged 70. The Croatian government declared 31 July a day of national mourning, and he was buried in Vela Luka on 1 August. The album "Dolaziš" followed in 2025.