Riva

Riva was a pop group from Zadar, Croatia, founded by keyboard player Dalibor Musap, who led it until it stopped in 1992; English Wikipedia dates its formation to 1986. Singer Emilija Kokić fronted the band, with Nenad Nakić on bass, Zvonimir Zrilić on guitar and Boško Colić on drums, and Musap, Nakić and Zrilić also sang.

With the support of Rajko Dujmić, the group made its debut at the 1988 Zagreb festival with "Zadnja suza", with music by Musap and lyrics by Kokić. Early in 1989, representing Television Zagreb, Riva won the Yugoslav selection, Jugovizija, in Novi Sad, and on 6 May 1989 in Lausanne its song "Rock Me", by Rajko Dujmić and Stevo Cvikić, won the Eurovision Song Contest with 137 points. It was the first and only Eurovision win for Yugoslavia, and John Kennedy O'Connor's official history of the contest calls it an unexpected one; the following contest was held in Zagreb. That year Riva also represented Eurovision in America and came fourth at the Distant Accords Award festival in Nashville.

In 1989 Riva released the album Rock Me on Jugoton for the Yugoslav market and an English-language album on Koch Records International, and in 1990 the second album, Srce laneta, the single "Suzo moja piši" / "Meni mama ne da da..." and two English songs credited to Per Gessle of Roxette. The band appeared on major TV shows across Europe and promoted its records in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium, and "Rock Me" stayed in the charts for a long time even in Japan.

Signed to a Swiss agency, Riva started work on a third album, Lude glave, lude godine, with Per Gessle, and was to open for Roxette on a world tour. The members broke with the agency when it wanted them presented as a Yugoslav band while their families in Zadar were sheltering from shelling. "We come from Zadar, our families are huddled in basements because grenades of the Serbian army are falling on Zadar, and we would act like Yugoslavians?" Emilija Kokić said in a 2019 interview. The album was never released, and only three of its songs were heard, at the Croatian Eurovision selection Dora in 1993.

With the war the band gradually ended its work with foreign labels and broke up in 1992, after which the members went their own ways, with only a few small reunions between 1993 and 2016. Croatia Records released The Best Of in 2016. Riva is remembered above all for "Rock Me" and "Zadnja suza".