Šo!Mazgoon

Šo!Mazgoon is a Croatian band that plays the songs of the southern Dalmatian islands, mostly in the čakavian dialect, in arrangements that run from rock and reggae to folk, pop, world music and country. They are on Muzika-Balkan as a Croatian band, regarded with their frontman Žan Jakopač as the founders of the "island wave". Jakopač writes in the dialect spoken in Postira on the island of Brač; the sources do not name a home town for the band, but in July 2025 it was on the summer programme in Postira.

Jakopač explained the island wave simply: he needed to express himself, and he did it in the dialect of Postira, because dialects are what makes the culture rich. Good music has always come from islands, he said, from Jamaica, Cuba, Ireland and Britain, so why not from Brač? The members named on the Croatian Wikipedia are Jakopač, Boris Leiner, the drummer of the original Azra, Mladen Juričić and Stanko Kovačić.

Their albums came out on Aquarius Records: Šo!Mazgoon (1999), Umri'ću od bonace (2001), Velegradele (2003) and No Name No Fame Vs. Šo!Mazgoon (2005), with the promo single "Ganja" in 2003. In 2001 they sang "Na Palagruzu" at the Melodije hrvatskog Jadrana festival in Split and won the award for best performance. They worked with Oliver Dragojević, who sings on "Jubov gre", the women's Klapa Dišpet and Nikša Bratoš. In 2004 the town of Vis gave them its golden plaque for promoting the central Dalmatian islands in song and for the project "Otoče, volim te", and the best-of album of that name was nominated for a Porin in 2007. The compilation 15 Slanih, with Gego & Picigin band and Kopito, was reviewed on AllMusic.

In 2009 most of the line-up carried on as Žan i Mazguni, with Jakopač as the dancing, singing frontman and producer of an album for Menart on which some 22 musicians played. After a long break Šo!Mazgoon returned with Albun, reviewed in January 2025: fourteen songs, nine of them in the island style, all written, recorded and largely played by Jakopač, with "Maške", "Ko koloč", "Skatango" and "Ukulele i chihuahua". The playlist is the band's Topic channel, from "Na Palagruzu" to "Maške".