Šako Polumenta

Sakib "Šako" Polumenta is a Montenegrin pop-folk singer from Bijelo Polje, popular throughout the former Yugoslav republics. He is known for combining pop music with traditional Balkan styles. He grew up in a modest family with five brothers and a sister.

He went into the army at 18, and afterwards his mother found him a job as a foreman at the company where she worked. It was his brother who noticed his talent on the guitar and arranged his first evening in a kafana, where he put a band together on the spot. While he was singing in a hotel garden in Prijepolje, the manager of Marinko Rokvić spotted him and invited him to Germany as Rokvić's opening act. With the money he saved from singing in restaurants he recorded the song "Pod sjajem ružičastih zvezda".

Šako Polumenta began his recording career in 1993 with the album Ej, sudbino, and has since released eleven studio albums, among them Aman, aman (1999), Od ljubavi oslepeo (2000), Uvijek blizu (2004), Karta za budućnost (2006), Sanjao sam san... (2008), Heroj (2011) and Sve je samo tren (2015). Early in his career he sang in the Ekavian dialect, which was unusual for a singer from Montenegro but won him a wide audience. At the first Montefon awards in Podgorica in 2001 he was named Folk Singer of the Year.

Later singles include "Ne gledaj u moje oči" (2011), "Pečat ljubavi" (2014), "Jedno smo drugo prodali" (2015), "Hej to, to" (2016), "Tri na karte" (2017) and "Bonjour" (2018), a duet with Katarina Grujić. He has worked with many colleagues, including Vesna Zmijanac, Vesna Rivas, Dara Bubamara, Dona Ares, Slavica Ćukteraš and Stoja, on whose 2006 album Metak he sings "Gde god pođem tebi idem".

Šako is the uncle of the singer Dado Polumenta and helped him start his career. He lives and works in Podgorica. In 2024, when he looked back on thirty years of his career in an interview, he also sang "Ne daj srce da pati" at the revue evening of the Ilidža festival.