Pro Arte

Pro Arte was a pop band from Sarajevo, founded in the autumn of 1967 by the composer Đorđe Novković after he graduated in conducting from the Sarajevo Music Academy. Novković, born in 1943 in Vladimirci in Serbia and raised in Sarajevo, played keyboards and wrote the music and lyrics. He also played keyboards in Indexi in 1968 and 1969, and in 1973 the two Sarajevo bands merged, an experiment that lasted only several months. The best-known line-up had Vladimir Savčić Čobi on vocals, Vladimir Borovčanin on drums and Slobodan Kovačević on bass.

Čobi, born in Niš in 1948, was the voice of Pro Arte through the late 1960s and the 1970s, and the band recorded for Jugoton of Zagreb. Its first big song was "Lola" in 1968, the year it also sang "Kao i prije" and "Sunce će sjati za sve ljude ovog svijeta" at the Zagreb festival. In 1970 Pro Arte won the Zagreb festival with "Pruži mi ruku ljubavi", sang "Ukrast ću te, Mare" in Split and "Život mi je prazan" in Opatija. In 1971 came "Dolina našeg detinjstva", "Sam na svijetu" at the Omladina festival in Subotica and "Hej, ti slatka Lulu" at the Yugoslav selection for Eurovision.

The band won the Vaš šlager sezone festival in Sarajevo in 1972 with "Nemoj draga plakati" and took second place at Beogradsko proleće in 1975 with "Jedna mala plava". It was a regular at the Split festival, where its songs included "Vratija se barba iz Amerike" in 1975, and its other favourites were "Tužna su zelena polja", "Tike, tike, tačke" and "Mama Huanita".

Pro Arte released some 50 singles before it split in 1980, though it came back from time to time during the 1980s. Novković went on to write hits for singers such as Mišo Kovač, Neda Ukraden and Zdravko Čolić; he died in Zagreb on 6 May 2007. Čobi died in Belgrade on 20 March 2009.